Abstract
Astragalus hamosus contains valuable biologically active compounds, incl. flavonoids. The possibility for in vitro cultivation of the species as a source of important flavonoids was studied. Shoot and callus cultures were established and successfully cultivated on different nutrition media, complemented or not with growth regulators. An ultra-high performance liquid chromatography – high-resolution electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRESIMS) qualitative and quantitative analysis of non-purified methanol extracts of these cultures was performed. It was found that the cultures produced rutin in comparable quantity. Interestingly, both shoots and callus cultures accumulated the rare triglycosides alcesefoliside and mauritianin. The quantity of mauritianin, biosynthesized in shoots, was significantly higher to that in callus cultures. Alcesefoliside, was in lower quantity, compared to mauritianin. In addition, callus cultures produced alcesefoliside trice as the shoots, besides their lower level of differentiation. These findings could serve as initial research to establish the value of in vitro cultures from A. hamosus as an alternative mean of production of pharmaceutically important flavonol glycosides.
Highlights
Astragalus hamosus L. (Fabaceae) is an annual or biennial ascending plant, distributed in the Mediterranean, Southern Europe, Caucasus, Central and Southwest Asia
The seedlings were aseptically transferred on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium solidified with agar-agar
Pharmacia 68(4): 927–931 well (Fig. 1) and after four sub-cultivation cycles enough biomass was obtained for phytochemical analysis
Summary
Astragalus hamosus L. (Fabaceae) is an annual or biennial ascending plant, distributed in the Mediterranean, Southern Europe, Caucasus, Central and Southwest Asia. The species is spread in Bulgaria as well. The species is quite small and the naturally growing biomass is expensive to collect in quantities, suitable for the practice (Valev 1976; Asyov et al 2012). From the overground parts of the wild grown species rhamnocitrin-3-O-glucoside (Toaima 2002), rhamnocitrin-4’-β-D-galactopyranoside, hyperoside, isoquercitrin, astragalin, rhamnocitrin-3-O-neohesperidoside (Krasteva et al 2007; Krasteva 2013) were isolated. Hyperoside, astragalin and isoquercitrin were identified in introduced plants (Krasteva et al 2007). Astragalin and isoquercitrin were found in callus and suspension cultures of the species (Ionkova and Alfermann 1990; Ionkova 1995). Extracts from the fruits of the plant exhibited in vivo anti-inflammatory and analgesic activity (Shojaii et al 2015).
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