Concurrent with the resurgence of interest in herb-based therapies and drugs, research efforts centred on plant drugs the past half century offer interesting insights into their uniqueness. A look at these shall help us understand better the factors that culminated in the renewed interest towards plant-derived drugs.

Higher plants are solar-powered biochemical factories which manufacture what they need to survive from air, water and minerals. Many species of higher plants biosynthesize and accumulate extractable organic substances in quantities sufficient to be economically useful. Natural substances are employed either directly or indirectly by a large number of industries and phytochemicals figure prominently in several of these.