Plant Cell Walls: Economic Significance

Abstract Plant cell walls are composed of polysaccharides and, in the case of higher plants, lignin. The economic significance of plant cell walls arises largely from three types of uses: (1) use of whole tissues or slightly processed tissues whose constituents are primarily cell‐wall components (wood and other plant fibres); (2) use of delignified and extracted tissues (pulp); (3) use of extracted, and in some cases chemically modified, water‐soluble cell‐wall polysaccharides (pectins, seaweed polysaccharides, hemicelluloses). Other substances that can be extracted from plant tissues are generally extraneous to the cell wall.