Methyl jasmonate and salicylic acid as powerful elicitors for enhancing the production of secondary metabolites in medicinal plants: an updated review

• Published in: Plant cell, tissue and organ culture Vol. 153; no. 3; pp. 447 - 458
• Main Authors: Jeyasri, Rajendran, Muthuramalingam, Pandiyan, Karthick, Kannan, Shin, Hyunsuk, Choi, Sung Hwan, Ramesh, Manikandan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01-06-2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Bioactive compounds; Biological activity; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biosynthesis; Biotechnology; Herbal medicine; Life Sciences; Medicinal plants; Metabolites; Methyl jasmonate; Plant Genetics and Genomics; Plant Pathology; Plant Physiology; Plant Sciences; Predators; Review; Reviews; Salicylic acid; Secondary metabolites; Medicinal plants; Elicitors; Salicylic acid; Bioactive compounds; Methyl jasmonate
• ISSN: 0167-6857; 1573-5044
• DOI: 10.1007/s11240-023-02485-8

Plant secondary metabolites are bioactive scaffolds that are crucial for plant survival in the environment and to maintain a defense mechanism from predators. These compounds are generally present in plants at a minimal level and interestingly, they are found to have a wide variety of therapeutic values for humans. Several medicinal plants are used for pharmaceutical purposes due to their affordability, fewer adverse effects, and vital role in traditional remedies. Owing to this reason, these plants are exploited at a high range worldwide and therefore many medicinal plants are on the threatened list. There is a need of the hour to tackle this major problem, one effective approach called elicitation can be used to enhance the level of existing and novel plant bioactive compounds using different types of elicitors namely biotic and abiotic. This process can be generally achieved by
in vitro
and
in vivo
experiments. The current comprehensive review provides an overview of biotic and abiotic elicitation strategies used in medicinal plants, as well as their effects on secondary metabolites enhancement. Further, this review mainly deals with the enhancement of biomass and biosynthesis of different bioactive compounds by methyl jasmonate (MeJA) and salicylic acid (SA) as elicitors of wide medicinal plants in
in vitro
by using different cultures. The present review was suggested as a significant groundwork for peers working with medicinal plants by applying elicitation strategies along with advanced biotechnological approaches.