Influence of biotic and abiotic elicitors on artemisinin, quercetin, caffeic acid and essential oil production in Artemisia dracunculus L.

Artemisia dracunculus L. (tarragon) is valuable for its medicinal uses such as antimalarial, antibacterial and anticancer. Biotechnological methods need to be developed for the production of phytochemical compounds in plants with high and stable quality. Elicitation is one of the best tools for increasing secondary metabolites in various in vitro cultures. The current study determines the application of different concentrations of chitosan (25, 50, 100 and 150 mg/L) and UV-C (5/10, 5/15, 10/10 and 10/15 min/cm) as biotic and abiotic elicitors in tarragon leaf callus cultures. The main aim was to increase the accumulation of artemisinin, quercetin, caffeic acid and essential oil content. For this purpose, callus formation rates and morphological features were also investigated. The results show that highest callus formation, weight and diameter were observed in UV-C treated cultures. HPLC analyses revealed significant high accumulation of artemisinin (1.9 μg/g), quercetin (4.2 μg/g) and caffeic acid (2.9 μg/g) contents in 5/10 min/cm UV-C treated samples. GC–MS analyses of callus cultures indicate high production of total amount of monoterpenes in all chitosan applications, best in 25 mg/L (90.75%). The major compound was β-phellandrene in chemical composition of tarragon (19.61%) and increased the most in 10/15 min/cm UV-C application (43.39%). The results show that the physical elicitor UV-C can be effectively used in tarragon callus culture for enhancing pharmacologically active compounds in industrial production.