Improvement of growth and bacoside production in Bacopa monnieri through induced autotetraploidy with colchicine

Phithak Inthima; Kawee Sujipuli

doi:10.7717/peerj.7966

Improvement of growth and bacoside production in Bacopa monnieri through induced autotetraploidy with colchicine

PeerJ. 2019 Oct 25:7:e7966. doi: 10.7717/peerj.7966. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Phithak Inthima^#^{1

2}, Kawee Sujipuli^#^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Plant Tissue Culture Research Unit, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Naresuan University, Phitsanulok, Thailand.
² Center of Agricultural Biotechnology, Naresuan University, Phitsanulok, Thailand.
³ Department of Agricultural Science, Faculty of Agriculture Natural Resources and Environment, Naresuan University, Phitsanulok, Thailand.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Bacopa monnieri is a medicinal herb that is increasing in demand in Thailand. However, the lack of high-bacoside cultivars has limited pharmaceutical utilization and production. Here, chromosome doubling in B. monnieri was attempt to improve biomass and bacoside content in its seedling. Nodal segments were treated with colchicine (0, 0.025, 0.05, 0.075, 0.1, and 0.5% w/v) for 24 or 48 h before transferring to multiple shoot induction medium (1/2 MS medium supplemented with 0.2 mg L^-1 BAP). Of 326 tested clones, 18 and 84 were mixoploids and autotetraploids, respectively. The highest autotetraploid-induction percentage (14.6%) was found after treated with 0.5% (w/v) colchicine, and 48 hours exposure. From 28 selected autotetraploid clones, 21 and 13 have significantly higher fresh and dry weight compared to the diploid clone, respectively. The maximum fresh and dry weight of autotetraploid plants was 2.8 and 2.0-time higher than diploid plants, respectively. Moreover, the maximum total bacoside content (1.55 mg plant^-1) was obtained from an autotetraploid plant, which was 2.3-fold higher than the level in diploid plants. These novel autotetraploids have the potential to be developed as resources for value-added improvements in the medicinal and pharmaceutical industries.

Keywords: Ayurvedic medicine; Brahmi; Flow cytometry; Medicinal Plant; Polyploidization.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Naresuan University, Thailand (grant numbers P2560C433 and R2559B037). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.