Enhanced Colchicine Production in Hairy Root Cultures of Gloriosa Superba L. Using Microbial Elicitors

Elicitation is an efficient method that prevail various difficulties related to mass production of commercially useful secondary metabolites from plant cultures. Use of in vitro cultures, facilitated by the application of different biotic elicitors is an important technique to achieve stable and enhanced production of essential secondary metabolites. Gloriosa superba is a widely used medicinal plant known for an important alkaloid colchicine. In the present study, enhancement in colchicine content was reported from established hairy root cultures which were elicited with three different bacterial and fungal cultures. Enhancement in the colchicine content was increased to 3.4 folds on elicitation with A. alternata upto 8 days while with A. niger and C. lunata it was 1.9 and 2.4 folds respectively for 12 days. Also, 1.5 folds increase in colchicine content was observed with 10% cultural filtrate of A. alternata while with A. niger and C. lunata, increase was 1.6 folds. However, elicitation with 45 mg/l A. tumefaciens for 8 days resulted in 1.07 and 1.27 folds enhancement in colchicine content in hairy roots and in the medium respectively while the accumulation rate of colchicine in medium increased to 1.9 folds on 12th day of elicitation. It was also observed that the recovery of colchicine from the medium was high as compared to hairy root cultures, after elicitation with either bacterial or fungal cultures. Thus elicitation of G. suberba hairy root cultures using optimized microbial elicitors can be a suitable platform for scale-up production of colchicine content so as to meet the demands of pharmaceutical industries.