Journey of plants natural products from plants to bioactive products

Secondary metabolites present in medicinal plants having intrinsic functions in the host also possess vast and versatile pharmacological effects along with a crucial role in the herbal, food, cosmetics, and chemical industry sector. Traditional knowledge of medicinal plants provides the clues for the target-specific research by implementing botanical, phytochemical, analytical, biological, and biotechnological tools which can ultimately lead to the discovery of lead molecules. The structural complexity and molecular diversity of plant-based specialized metabolites make them potential drug-like candidates. Multivariate analytical and chromatographic techniques assists in phytochemical analysis and facilitates the isolation of secondary metabolites from plants. This review is mainly focused on covering fundamental aspects involved in the phytochemical study of plants starting from approaches used for the selection of particular plants for research, biosynthesis of the different classes of compounds owing to a diverse range and complexity, and complete steps involved from raw plant material to pure bioactive molecule along with tools used for structure elucidation and quality assessment of plants.