Elicitation of Submerged Adventitious Root Cultures of with for Production of Biomass and Secondary Metabolites.

is an important medicinal plant that belongs to the family. The leaves of are a rich source of many health-promoting agents such as polyphenols, flavonoids, and steviol glycoside, which play a key role in controlling obesity and diabetes. New strategies such as the elicitation of culture media are needed to enhance the productivity of active components. Herein, the extracts were exploited as elicitors to enhance the productivity of active components. is one of the parasitic plants that has the ability to elongate very fast and cover the host plant. Consequently, it may be possible that the addition of extracts to adventitious root cultures (ADR) of may elongate the root more than control cultures to produce higher quantities of the desired secondary metabolites. Therefore, the main objective of the current study was to investigate the effect of extract as a biotic elicitor on the biomass accumulation and production of antioxidant secondary metabolite in submerged adventitious root cultures of . Ten different concentrations of were added to liquid media containing 0.5 mg/L naphthalene acetic acid (NAA). The growth kinetics of adventitious roots was investigated for a period of 49 days with an interval of 7 days. The maximum biomass accumulation (7.83 g/3 flasks) was observed on medium containing 10 mg/L extract of on day 49. As the concentration of extract increases in the culture media, the biomass gradually decreases after 49 days of inoculation. In this study, the higher total phenolics content (0.31 mg GAE/g-DW), total flavonoids content (0.22 mg QE/g-DW), and antioxidant activity (85.54%) were observed in 100 mg/L treated cultures. The higher concentration (100 mg/L) of extract considerably increased the total phenolics content (TPC), total phenolics production (TPP), total flavonoids content (TFC), total flavonoids production (TFP), total polyphenolics content (TPPC), and total polyphenolics production (TPPP). It was concluded that the extract of moderately improved biomass accumulation but enhanced the synthesis of phenolics, flavonoids, and antioxidant activities. Here, biomass's independent production of secondary metabolites was observed with the addition of extract. The present study will be helpful to scale up adventitious roots culture into a bioreactor for the production of secondary metabolites rather than biomass accumulation in medicinally important .