ABSTRACT
Artemisia annua is the major source of the highly potent and effective artemisinin drug, which is the basis for a class of key ingredients widely used for the production of the first-line antimalarial drugs that are needed for treatment of the vector-borne lethal falciparum malaria in the most affected countries of Asia and Africa that are resistant to other traditional therapies. There are a few reports which have demonstrated that artemisinin can be produced successfully in callus and cell suspension cultures of A. annua though the artemisinin yields have been quite abysmal. Considering that A. annua is presently the only viable source of artemisinin, there is understandably a great degree of interest in enhancing its production. Wang and colleagues equally found that adjusting the light spectrum in transformed hairy root cultures of A. annua has a significant influence on biomass yield and artemisinin content.
