INVITED REVIEW Echinacea biotechnology: Challenges and opportunities Bilal Haider Abbasi & Praveen K. Saxena & Susan J. Murch & Chun-Zhao Liu Received: 8 September 2006 /Accepted: 20 June 2007 / Published online: 21 August 2007 / Editor: H. Wagner # The Society for In Vitro Biology 2007 Abstract Echinacea, better known as purple coneflower, has received a global attention because of its increasing medicinal value. There is enormous potential for the discovery of new medicinal compounds in this species and an immediate need for techniques to facilitate the production of high quality, chemically consistent plant material for drug development and clinical trials. In vitro tissue culture of Echinacea can play a vital role in the development of novel germplasm, rapid multiplication, and genetic modifications for an enhanced phytochemical production. Recent estab- lishment of liquid culture techniques, large-scale bioreactors, and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation are changing the production parameters of the Echinacea species. This review provides an overview of the recent developments in in vitro technologies and challenges that remain in the Echinacea biotechnology. Keywords Echinacea . Plant regeneration . Somatic embryogenesis . Agrobacterium-mediated transformation . Plant growth regulators . Phytochemicals Echinacea: An Important Medicinal Plant Echinacea is widely used in Europe and North America for the treatment of common cold. Echinacea, also referred to as purple coneflower, is geographically confined to Amer- ica (Macchia et al. 2001; Binns et al. 2004) and is distributed in dry prairies from Texas to Saskatchewan and from west of the Rocky mountains to Minnesota (McGregor 1968; Kindscher 1989; Bauer and Foster 1991; Foster 1991 ). Major producers of Echinacea in Europe are in Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Italy, and Spain (Galambosi 2004). In the last few years, the areas of cultivation of Echinacea extended beyond North America and Europe into South America, Australia, and other areas of the world (Yu and Kaarlas 2004). The global cultivation area of Echinacea was roughly estimated at several thousand hectares (Commonwealth Secretariat 2001). Con- sumption of herbal products rose from 15 to 35% in the last few years, and garlic and Echinacea were the most popular self-care herbs (Saskatchewan Nutraceutical Network 2001). In 1998, Echinacea was the tenth most important medicinal plant sold in Europe with annual sales of about $120 million. In North America, Echinacea is listed as the first among 11 top-selling herbal extracts (Yu and Kaarlas 2004). Retail sales of Echinacea products are more than $158 million annually in the USA and have been estimated at $1,300 million annually worldwide (Blumenthal 2003). Echinacea species are members of the Asteraceae family (Perry et al. 2001) and include E. angustifolia, E. pallida, In Vitro Cell.Dev.Biol.—Plant (2007) 43:481–492 DOI 10.1007/s11627-007-9057-2 B. H. Abbasi : C.-Z. Liu (*) National Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, People’ s Republic of China e-mail: czliu@home.ipe.ac.cn P. K. Saxena Department of Plant Agriculture, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada S. J. Murch Chemistry, I. K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences, University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Kelowna, BC V1V 1V7, Canada C.-Z. Liu Arkansas Biosciences Institute, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, AR 72467, USA B. H. Abbasi Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, People’ s Republic of China