Artemisinin is an anti-malarial medicine isolated from sweet wormwood(Artemisia annua L.),a tradition-al Chinese herb of the family Compositae.It has a marked activity against chloroquinine-resistant and chloroquinine-sensitive strains of Plasmodium falciparum and is useful in the treatment of cerebral malaria(Klayman,1985).Plant tissue and cell culture technique has been used as an important method for the research of natural medicines and the production of secondary metabolites(Charlwood et al,1990).But there still exist many technical prob-lems on large-scale culture,especially contamination ow-ing to microbes.This is the largest obstacle for the indus-tralization of plant tissue and cell culture.
