Several Cinchona species are sources of the anti-malarial drug quinine and anti-arrhythmic drug quinidine and other related alkaloids. Quinine remains an important anti-malarial drug and economic production of quinine and related alkaloids from tissue culture is of high commercial value. There has not been much success, however, in their production in cell culture as was the case with morphine and codeine. Cell cultures of Cinchona ledgeriana and Papaver somniferum accumulated alkaloids other than the commercially important ones. It was found that C. ledgeriana suspension cultures induced using sterile shoot cultures of plantlets germinated from surface sterilized seeds could accumulate important alkaloids, but cell growth was very slow and could not be sustained beyond 5–8 sub cultures. Transformed roots could to a certain extent accumulate alkaloids but they too had variable productive capacities.

Similarly, with P. somniferum lack of organized laticiferous tissue was found to be responsible for negligible morphine biosynthesis. However, when cultured cells were manipulated to undergo organogenic differentiation, forming latex-accumulating cell types, there was some morphine accumulation.

In the same way, transformed cultures of Mentha citrata and Mentha piperita accumulate terpenes when they are made to undergo shoot differentiation. The terpene formation is associated with formation of leaf-bearing shoots and even presence of oil glands on leaves. Several other volatile oil-bearing plants have reportedly not accumulated terpenes because of noncompartmentalization of the formed metabolites. In cultures of Lavandula angustifolia, even the formed monoterpenes disappeared after sometime because of lack of storage structures, like tichomes, vittae, or glands. It can be seen that culture morphology strongly influences the ability of the tissue to biosynthesize secondary products. Many secondary metabolites appear to require an organized structure indicating a regulatory hierarchy in which the morphology is a dominant factor. Thus, biosynthetic capacity seems to be localized in specific cell types within the organ.