Himalaya bestowed its inhabitant with rich plant biodiversity that not only cater the need of highlanders, but also provide sufficient resources to meet societal as well as industrial requirements of the region. Lately, overexploitation of natural resources for commercial gains and inefficient utilization of available resources threatened their ‘sustainability’. Considering these facts, our research group at Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) – Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHBT) is exploring the possibility of producing industrially important – high value secondary metabolites through alternative route using in vitro plant cell culture technology. Presently, our team has leads for production of phytochemicals like Picrosides, Valepotriates and Naphthoquinone pigments.

Thus, we are not only ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns (SDG 12), but also help in conservation of valuable bioresources, and halt and reverse land degradation, halt biodiversity loss (SDG 15)