Among all nanoparticles, silver-nanoparticles (AgNPs) are well-known for their antimicrobial and hormetic effects, which in appropriate doses, led to the improvement of plant biomass as well as secondary metabolite accumulation. Nanoparticles are entities in the nanometric dimension range: they possess unique physicochemical properties. Nowadays, the addition of nanoparticles as elicitors has, for instance, gained worldwide interest because of its success in microbial decontamination and enhancement of secondary metabolites. Several efforts have been made to ameliorate the effectiveness and production of plant tissue culture, using biotic and abiotic factors.

Plant tissue culture plays an important role in plant biotechnology due to its potential for massive production of improved crop varieties and high yield of important secondary metabolites. Inappropriate use of antibiotics at all levels of health care delivery poor sanitation and lack of awareness of seriousness of the AR are increasingly realized as modifiable factors. Antibiotic Resistance is an ever increasing public health problem which has evolved from environmental mixing of genes and is further aggravated by unrestricted use of antibiotics in livestock husbandry and poultry farming. Therefore, problem of antibiotic resistance (AR) is an ever-increasing menace to mankind (Petri, 2011). The Penicillin was discovered in 1928 and put to clinical use in 1940. Domagk (1933) used prontosil and its metabolite sulphanilamide in infections (Otten, 1986). Paul Ehrlich hypothesized “Magic Bullets” against microbes in 1900 and Salvarsan was the first antimicrobial agent used against syphilis in 1906 (Heynick, 2009). Given the billions of years of co-evolution of antibiotic producing and antibiotic resistant organisms.

Microorganisms have been naturally exposed to these bioactive products during evolution. Many antibiotics are obtained from soil microbes (fungi and bacteria) and have been present in the environment long before humans started using them in clinical settings. Microbes are known to exist since antiquity.

The original magic bullet