Enhanced production of anthraquinones and phenolic compounds using chitosan from the adventitious roots of Morinda coreia Buck. and Ham.

Abstract

This report establishes the production and characterization of anthraquinones and phenolic compounds from the adventitious root cultures of Morinda coreia, induced from the leaves on half strength Murashige and Skoog’s (MS) medium fortified with 1.0 mg l−1 of Indole-3 butyric acid (IBA). The in vitro regenerated adventitious roots (AR) were treated with various concentrations of IBA (0.5–5.0 mg l-1) containing half-strength of liquid MS medium with sucrose (1.5 %). The maximum amount of anthraquinones (149.80 mg g−1 dry weight of AR) and phenolic compounds (71.6 mg g−1 dry weight of AR) were detected on 1.0 mg l−1 and 4.0 mg l−1 of IBA respectively. These proliferated AR on IBA contained 2.10 times more anthraquinones and 1.89 times more phenolics as compared with the yield of in vivo grown roots of M. coreia. Other parameters, such as growth ratio (5.082), fresh weight (1.568 g) and dry weight (0.163 g) of AR were recorded maximum with the concentration of 1.0 mg l−1 IBA. These AR were introduced into the two-stage culture system with various concentrations of chitosan (0.2, 0.4 and 0.8 mg ml-1) for elicitation. Among these, 0.4 mg ml-1 chitosan was observed as the best concentration and further used for the production of secondary metabolites (anthraquinones and phenolics) at different time intervals (2–8 days). Growth ratio and biomass (fresh and dry weight) were decreased from second to eighth day of elicitation but the amount of anthraquinones (292.038 mg g-1 dry weight) and phenolics (86.8 mg g-1 dry weight) were increased till 4th day of the elicitation. The methods developed in this study could be used for further proliferation of AR and large scale production of anthraquinones and phenolic compounds using in vitro raised leaves of M. coreia.