Tissue culture tools for selenium hyperaccumulator Neptunia amplexicaulis for development in phytoextraction

Billy O'Donohue; Jayeni Hiti-Bandaralage; Madeleine Gleeson; Chris O'Brien; Maggie-Anne Harvey; Antony van der Ent; Katherine Pinto Irish; Neena Mitter; Alice Hayward

doi:10.1007/s13659-022-00351-2

Tissue culture tools for selenium hyperaccumulator Neptunia amplexicaulis for development in phytoextraction

Nat Prod Bioprospect. 2022 Aug 5;12(1):28. doi: 10.1007/s13659-022-00351-2.

Authors

Billy O'Donohue¹, Jayeni Hiti-Bandaralage², Madeleine Gleeson², Chris O'Brien², Maggie-Anne Harvey³, Antony van der Ent³, Katherine Pinto Irish³, Neena Mitter², Alice Hayward²

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Horticultural Science, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia. billyodonohue@gmail.com.
² Centre for Horticultural Science, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
³ Centre for Mined Land Rehabilitation, Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.

Abstract

Neptunia amplexicaulis is an herbaceous legume endemic to the Richmond area in central Queensland, Australia and is one of the strongest known Selenium hyperaccumulators on earth, showing significant potential to be utilised in Se phytoextraction applications. Here a protocol was established for in vitro micropropagation of Se hyperaccumulator N. amplexicaulis using nodal segments from in vitro-germinated seedlings. Shoot multiplication was achieved on Murashige and Skoog (MS) basal media supplemented with various concentrations of 6-Benzylaminopurine (BA) (1.0, 2.0, 3.0 mg L^-1) alone or in combination with low levels of Naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) (0.1, 0.2, 0.3 mg L^-1), with 2.0 mg L^-1 BA + 0.2 mg L^-1 NAA found to be most effective. Elongated shoots were rooted in vitro using NAA, with highest root induction rate of 30% observed at 0.2 mg L^-1 NAA. About 95% of the in vitro rooted shoots survived acclimatization. Clonally propagated plantlets were dosed with selenate/selenite solution and assessed for Se tissue concentrations using Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES) and found to retain their ability to hyperaccumulate. The protocol developed for this study has potential to be optimised for generating clonal plants of N. amplexicaulis for use in research and phytoextraction industry applications.

Keywords: Hyperaccumulation; Micropropagation; Neptunia amplexicaulis; Phytoextraction; Selenium; Tissue culture.