Poster: Secondary metabolism

Abs # 281: Essential oils from in vitro shoots and micropropagated plants of S. officinalis L.

Presenter:	Avato, Pinarosa , avato@farmchim.uniba.it
Authors	Avato, Pinarosa  (A)   D'Elia, Roberta  (A)   Morone Fortunato, Irene  (B)   Ruta, Claudia  (B)
Affiliations:	(A): University, Dipartimento Farmaco-Chimico (B): University,Dipartimento di Scienze delle Produzioni Vegetali

S. officinalis contains a volatile oil responsible for some of the medical and aromatic properties of the plant. A growing interest to micropropagate certain species of sage for the production of higher triterpenes and phenolics has been evident in the recent years. This paper reports on the essential oils from in vitro grown shoots of sage and micropropagated plants from the same clone. For comparative purposes the volatiles from field grown parent plants and from their clones by cuttings have also been analyzed. Morphological details of the secretory glands are also reported. Camphor and thujones have been identified in all the samples of sage. The quantity of camphor seems to be inversely correlated with that of thujones and it reaches a maximum in the micropropagated plants and in the micropropagated plants after acclimatization. Lower amounts of camphor are instead found in the oils of the in vitro grown shoots. The chemical profiles of the volatiles from the various samples of sage allow some considerations on the metabolism of the plant. In particular, the higher amount of camphor in the micropropagated samples, compared to the lower quantity in the oil from the parental plants and from their clones by cuttings, should be correlated to the younger stage of development of the regenerated plants of sage. In the in vitro grown shoots, which are at a very early stage of growth, a pattern of metabolites disclosing an even earlier part of the biosynthetic pathway is observed. Shoots show, in fact, a narrow range of compounds, with very low amounts of thujones and camphor. Their oil has instead a high content of diterpenes whose biosynthesis, more related to the photosynthetic process, should be considered to be activated in the earlier stages of plant differentiation.