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Plants: The Best Synthesizer of Pharmaceutically Important Secondary Metabolites and Nanoparticles

Sreekumar S

Plants are the renewable resource of majority of existing and novel drugs. It can produce innumerable number of secondary metabolites using raw materials formed during the primary metabolic pathways in response to needs and challenges of its environment. The occurrence of these secondary compounds among plants amounts alkaloids as 20%, flavonoids as 15%, triterpenes and simple phenolics around 10% and others in very low level, with limonoid being the least. Most of these have various applications in the area of pharmaceuticals, food additives, fragrances, pesticides, etc. The total number of natural products produced by plants has been over 600,000.