Abstract
The limited production of bioactive essential oils in natural plants does not meet the increasing worldwide market demand. Plant cell culture technology can be used for the higher production of industrially important essential oils. In the present study, a suitable method for production of essential oils was developed through establishment and elicitation of adventitious roots (AR) in a medicinally important plant Artemisia amygdalina D. The results indicated that leaf explants cultured on solid Murashige and Skoog (MS) media supplemented with 1.0 mg/L α- naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) and 4% sucrose instigated the higher AR induction frequency (90 ± 4.25) and maximum AR biomass (fresh biomass: 17.7 g/L). Furthermore, in the AR when transiently elicited with different elicitors for different time periods, methyl jasmonate (Me-J: 0.5 mg/L) resulted in the higher production of total phenolic content (TPC: 3.6 mg), total flavonoid content (TFC: 2.3 mg) and phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL: 4.8 U/g×FW) activity, respectively. Nonetheless, considerable levels of the major bioactive compounds such as α-thujene (6.8%), α-pinene (8.3%), 1,8-cineole (16.2%), camphor (8.4%) and verbenole (10.2%) were recorded in the Me-J treated AR. Thus, a feasible protocol for production of essential oils through AR in A. amygdalina was established, which can be exploited for commercial production of the industrially important terpenes.
Highlights
Herbal medicines are getting resurgence for their worldwide recognition in the treatment of many diseases, especially in the era of antibiotic resistance, where many commercially available synthetic antibiotics are becoming impotent against several human diseases [1,2]
The primarily objectives of the current research work were to optimize a feasible protocol for the establishment of adventitious roots (AR) and production of bioactive metabolites in the medicinally important and critically endangered plant Artemisia amygdalina
The results indicated that among all the auxins tested in vitro, the highest growth parameters (% AR induction: 87 ± 4.25, number of AR per explant: 6.8, length: 3.2 cm and fresh biomass: 15.7 g/L) were recorded in the explants cultured in the presence of 1.0 mg/L naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) (Table 1)
Summary
Herbal medicines are getting resurgence for their worldwide recognition in the treatment of many diseases, especially in the era of antibiotic resistance, where many commercially available synthetic antibiotics are becoming impotent against several human diseases [1,2]. The therapeutic potential of these herbal medicines is by virtue of the presence of important natural products called secondary metabolites. Medicinal plants act as a rich repository of a variety of the bioactive secondary metabolites and provide the raw material to pharmaceutical industries for the formulation of herbal products [3]. The genus Artemisia of family Asteraceae has 500 species worldwide, majority of the plant species are medicinally and economically important [4]. Amongst the medicinal plants from this genus, Artemisia amygdalina D. is one of the vital plants, reported for its diverse pharmacological and ethno medicinal uses by people from different communities. It is found across Asia, Europe and
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