RESUMO
Increasing from day to day tendency of human societies to plant based drug usage increased demand of secondary metabolite application. Although artificial production of these compounds greatly progressed, but the only way to achieve these fine medicinal compounds has been to extract them from plant resources. Alkaloid field, although very old, is still in its infancy with regard to being fully understood, and biotechnologically exploited. Up to now, approximately 5000 different alkaloids, in 15% of plants that belong to 150 families, have been recognized, that tropane alkaloids such as hyosyamine, scopolamine, atropine and cocaine, with a broad medical usage are a class of them. Industrial tropane alkaloid production by modern techniques such as cell and tissue culture, somatic hybridization, metabolic engineering and commercial large scale culture, is highly concerned nowadays and in this review, the authors have tried to point out some of the results obtained by application of these techniques