Biotechnology and pharmacological evaluation of medicinal plants: An overview

Medicinal plants contain a wide variety of active principles that have been exploited for the treatment of various ailments by a majority of the world's population. In recent years, many advanced biotechnological methods are employed to select, multiply, improve, and analyze medicinal plants for their application in traditional and modern medicinal preparations and drug discovery. The purpose of the present review is to focus on the application of biotechnological tools for multiplication and genetic enhancement of the medicinal plants by adopting techniques including in vitro regeneration and genetic transformation and highlight selected approaches followed for drug discovery from medicinal plants.