Influence of different media, medium strength and carbon sources on adventitious shoot cultures and production of bacoside A in Bacopa monnieri(L.)

Bacopa monnieri (L.) Wettst. (Plantaginaceae), commonly known as Brahmi, is used in Ayurveda as a medicinal herb, found throughout the Indian subcontinent in wet, damp and marshy areas. The herb yields pharmaceutically active compounds called bacosides. The current investigation was carried out to assess the potential for increasing biomass and the concentration of bacoside A from the in vitro regenerated shoots in different media (MS, B5, NN and N6), the strength of the MS medium (0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 1.0, 1.50 and 2.0X) and carbon source [sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, sucrose + glucose (1:1), sucrose + maltose (1:1), glucose + fructose (1:1), glucose + maltose (1:1), fructose + sucrose (1:1) and fructose + maltose (1:1)]. All the culture media were supplemented with 2 mg/L Kinetin (Kin) at pH 5.8. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to determine the bacoside A content from the regenerated shoots. Optimum number of adventitious shoots (70.75 shoots per explant), fresh weight (2.344 g), dry weight (0.166 g) and bacoside A content (13.052 mg/g DW) were obtained from the cultures grown in the MS medium. Bacoside A production was highest in the shoots grown in the glucose + fructose combination (15.588 mg/g DW) among the different carbon sources tested. These findings suggest that B. monnieri culture requires full strength MS medium and a moderate level of sucrose. The present study is useful to obtain optimum production of biomass and bacoside A from the in vitro regenerated shoots of B. monnieri.