The strategy of plant cell culture has become an alternative for the production of high value metabolites that are normally produced in low levels in plants and for which there is not chemical synthesis processes known. However, for the implementation of this technology it is necessary to develop strategies that let us improve the productivity of the in vitro cultures. In this work, different alternatives in order to fulfill that objective are presented: in the first part, the strategies to obtain overproducer cell lines are discussed, showing the clasic strategies for cell line selection and genetic engineering as alternatives; after that, the efect over the growth and secondary metabolite productition of the chemical medium composition and physical conditions of the process are reviewed; finally, the elicitation is presented as an alternative to induce the synthesis of secondary metabolites in plant cell cultures.