Dear Colleagues,

The journal Plants will be publishing a Special Issue on “The Use of Plant Biotechnology for an Enhanced Productivity and Conservation of Medicinal Plants”.

For centuries, humans have explored plants for medicinal purposes, and medicinal plants have remained a valuable source of therapeutic agents with many of today’s drugs being plant-derived natural products or their derivatives. As a result of the extensive dependence and collection from the wild, local populations of medicinal plants are continuously under severe pressure to meet the increasing demand locally, nationally, and internationally. Increased anthropogenic activities have contributed to the destruction of natural habitats of many medicinal plants, and this has resulted in diverse conservation status (e.g., declining, threatened, and endangered or even extinct). Thus, exploring new approaches with the potential to mitigate diminishing populations, loss of genetic diversity, local extinctions, and habitat degradation for medicinal plants remains pertinent.

The expanding biotechnological tools and techniques (e.g., in vitro regeneration and genetic transformations and genome editing) are useful as regards ensuring the rapid clonal proliferation and maintenance of genetic integrity of medicinal plants as a means for their conservation. In addition, these approaches offer a controlled platform for the enhanced production of valuable secondary metabolites which remain highly valued as nutraceutical cosmeceutical and pharmaceutical sectors.

This Special Issue will highlight the increasing use and optimization of different biotechnological techniques for improving the production and conservation of medicinal plants. In addition, manuscripts focusing on the application of these approaches for the production of valuable phytochemicals will be considered.

Dr. Adeyemi Oladapo Aremu
Prof. Dr. Nokwanda (Nox) P. Makunga
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Antimicrobial
• Antioxidant
• Biological activities
• Bioreactors
• Cell suspension culture
• Conservation
• Cryopreservation
• Elicitors
• Genetic transformation
• Genomics
• Gene editing
• Hairy root culture
• Medicinal plants
• Micropropagation
• Molecular biology
• Phenolic acids
• Phytochemicals
• Phytohormones
• Secondary (specialized) metabolites
• Somatic embryogenesis
• Stress