Production of hernandulcin by biotechnological methods
Resumen
Hernandulcin is a sesquiterpene isolated from the leaves and flowers of Phyla scaberrima. It has sweetening properties exceeding 1000 times the sweetness of sucrose. Scalable production is necessary since the production of hernandulcine is low. For this reason, we developed a biotechnological platform to produce hernandulcin. We generated hairy root cultures of P. scaberrima by infecting leaves and stems with Agrobacterium rhizogenes strain 1500. We chose 10 lines at random and 10 replicates of each line were tested. We determined the best conditions and elicitors that increased the production of hernandulcin from batches grown for 15 days. We monitor production by HPLC and corroborate its identity by GC-MS chromatography. Subsequently, batch cultures of 25 days were carried out to determine the best conditions, which were: pH 7, 25°C, 4% sucrose, 0.5 NAA in a 12/12 photoperiod. The elicitors that responded favorably were salicylic acid, Glucanex, chitin, farnesol and (+)epi-a-bisabolol. Managing to produce up to 240 mg L-1 of hernandulcin. The hairy root transformation system was highly efficient for P. scaberrima, corroborating its usefulness in functional gene research in crop improvement.