Cultivation of Artemisia annua—the environmental perspective

Karina Knudsmark Sjøholm, Bjarne W. Strobel, Nina Cedergreen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingBook chapterResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Bioactive secondary metabolites represent a wide range of different chemical compounds, but the three major classes are nitrogen-containing compounds, phenols, and terpenes. Artemisinin, produced by Artemisia annua L. (sweet wormwood, annual wormwood, sweet annie, sweet sagewort) belongs to the terpenes group. Artemisinin is a sesquiterpene lactone with an endoperoxide bridge (Liu et al., 1979), and is very bioactive against chloroquine-resistant strains of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum (Klayman, 1985). Today, combination therapies containing artemisinin are recommended as the first-line treatment for malaria in 77 out of 80 countries and amounted to 311 million treatments worldwide in 2015 (WHO, 2015).

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationArtemisia Annua : Prospects, Applications and Therapeutic Uses
PublisherCRC Press
Publication date2017
Pages131-154
Chapter7
ISBN (Print)9781138632103
ISBN (Electronic)9781351802864
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017

Cite this