The Maruzen pharmaceutical company in Japan has undertaken a grand project using the micropropagation technique for G. glabra. Glycyrrhiza glabra is one of the most important plants in cosmetics, food, and pharmaceutical markets
The major component glycyrrhizin is massively used as a sweetener in food industry and also frequently compounded in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals for the reason that it has strong bioactivities such as anti-inflammation and a chemopreventive activity on cutaneous oxidative stress
Glycyrrhiza glabra grows naturally in the middle region of the Eurasian continent of the Middle East, China, and Mongolia. However, the future supply is uncertain due to various circumstances, such as political instability in the Middle East, fear of G. glabra depletion with overharvesting, and climate change
Maruzen Company planned to cultivate G. glabra in NSW, Australia, whose latitude is almost the same as one of the regions in the Eurasian continent where G. glabra grows naturally, although it is in the Southern Hemisphere
They screened 20 elite clones including glycyrrhizin, which is more than 5% of the many plants introduced from Turkey and Russia
They multiplied the elite clones by micopropagation technique and sent 200 000 aseptic juvenile plants to the cultivating place in Australia. The G. glabra plants were further propagated there and are being cultivated, after acclimatization, in the oceanic space of 741 acres
Nowadays, most of the medicinal plants used for cosmetics are of wild origin. In the future, however, cultivated plants will gradually replace natural plants. This heralds a new era in the way natural components are produced.
Some examples of micropropagation of plants that could be used as cosmetics ingredients are shown in Table 5