Brazil is considered the country with the greatest biodiversity of the planet, it
houses numerous medicinal plants with remarkable therapeutic properties, as is
the case of the Amazon. These plants are often collected in a predatory and
indiscriminate manner, which can make them vulnerable to extinction. In addition
to predatory collection, the use of medicinal plants as raw material can be
compromised by factors such as heterogeneity of individuals, genetic and
biochemical variability, seasonality and difficulty of propagation.
As an alternative to these problems, plant tissue culture consists of cultivating, in
vitro, cells, tissues or plant organs under aseptic conditions. In this context, the
present study aimed to carry out a bibliographical survey on the applications of
tissue culture techniques in medicinal plants native to the Amazon. Indexed
databases such as Google Scholar, Scielo and Periodicals of CAPES were
consulted. According to the bibliographical survey carried out, it was verified that
the use of tissue culture techniques with medicinal plants native to the Amazon is
still incipient. Among the techniques, micropropagation was the most employed,
mostly only studies performed until the asepsis and culture establishment phase.
From the literature consulted, only three articles carried out studies on somatic
embryogenesis and only one, was successful in regeneration. Similarly, few
studies have performed in vitro establishment isolating zygotic embryos. It was
also verified that the studies are still focused on callus and no study on
suspension culture was found and only two with use of bioreactors. For in vitro
drug production it is necessary to obtain callus and these are cultivated in liquid
medium under agitation in suspension or bioreactor culture. Considering that the
studies are still incipiente, the enormous bottleneck of research regarding the use
of tissue culture techniques for medicinal plants indigenous to the Amazon region
becomes evident.
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