Solanum villosum Mill. an underutilized plant: establishment of hairy root culture and enhanced production of solasodine after elicitor treatment.

Abstract

Solanum villosum Mill. is an underutilized traditional medicinal plant of the Solanaceae family. Solasodine is a steroidal glycoalkaloid chemical compound; it is an important secondary metabolite in this species and is widely utilized in various pharmaceutical industries due to its bioactive properties. The study aims to establish a hairy root culture and investigate the effects of biotic and abiotic elicitors on enhancing the production of the bioactive compound solasodine from the elite hairy root line. The results indicated that various strains of Agrobacterium rhizogenes (A4, LBA9402, ATCC 15834, and MTCC 532) exhibited differing potentials in inducing hairy roots on leaf explants. The integration of different genes (rolA, rolB, rolC, rolD, aux1, ags, and virD1) of Ri plasmid in hairy root culture was confirmed by PCR-based analysis. The maximum transformation efficiency (84.39 ± 1.57%) was observed in the A4 strain. The HPLC analysis was performed and out of the various established hairy root lines, the SVTR-19 (Solanum villosum Transformed Root-Line-19) hairy root line induced by the A4 strain accumulated the highest amount of solasodine content (0.691 ± 0.046 mg g^‒1 DW). The optimum accumulation of solasodine (15.325 ± 0.024 mg g^‒1 DW) was observed in the hairy roots elicited with 7.5 mg l^‒1 methyl jasmonate after 6 days of treatment. The results suggest that elicitation could effectively enhance solasodine production in S. villosum hairy root cultures.