Plant biotechnology research: Strategies for potential commercialization

Malaysia is fast becoming an industrialized country. Traditional agricultural practices will be gradually replaced by establishment of high technologies. Plant biotechnology will ultimately be the method of choice to successfully industrialize plant production and the related products. Commercialization of plant biotechnology products is already available in the more developed nations. Some of the commercialized products already in the market include micropropagated clones, production of disease-free plants, secondary metabolites production via cell culture, gene markers and DNA related technologies. The development of new value-added plants via biotechnological manipulations takes a long period of time and may be longer than that of the conventional approaches. However, strategic plans can be developed to reduce the incubation period to commercially package the plant biotechnology products. The strategies can be implemented on a short term, mid-term and long term basis. One of the short term strategies for commercialization of plant biotechnology products is to mass propagate quality plants via tissue culture. The main advantage of micropropagation methods is the large number of plants that can be quickly produced within a small area throughout the year. It is suitable for plants that are difficult to propagate and have low seed set. Furthermore, the conventional propagated materials are often too slow to multiply, lack vigor and are often not uniform. One of the successful crops micropropagated for commercial production is banana plant, an important fruit crop of Malaysia. Another plant species of prime importance that has been successfully micropropagated is orchid. Orchis growing is a billion dollar industry in this country. Other plant species that can be mass propagated are important elite medicinal plants such as Eurycoma longifolia (Tongkat Ali) and Labisia pumila (Kacip Fatima). They are essential planting materials for the large-scale production. Medicinal plant studies are gaining in importance as the country is keen to be a global player in herbal industry. In addition, they can be a source of raw materials for developing new pharmaceutical products. The popular target areas include anti-oxidative, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, antifungal and anti-diabetic properties. The use of plant cell and tissue culture technologies to produce bioactive compounds is also now a popular research area. Transgenic technologies have now been used to improve plant performance and to develop plants tolerant to stresses including to that of pests, diseases and constraints related to soil factors. Other potential research areas include the essential oil and the fragrance in plants and flowers to produce value-added traits and improved plant products.