LED and methyl jasmonate enhance a strong antioxidant compound, verbascoside, production in Clerodendrum indicum and Acanthus ebracteatus

Verbascoside is an antioxidant compound that can be used in cosmeceutical and pharmaceutical products. It is found in various plants of order Lamiales. Clerodendrum indicum and Acanthus ebracteatus are Thai medicinal plants that accumulate verbascoside. There is no report on practical use of these two plants as the source of verbascoside production to date. Here we reported the sustainable and efficient verbascoside production from in vitro cultures of both plants by culturing under white, blue, and red LEDs. Furthermore, the optimum exposure time and concentration of methyl jasmonate were evaluated. Culturing both plants under blue LEDs for 6 weeks significantly enhanced verbascosides in C. indicum for 1.6-fold and A. ebracteatus for 1.8-fold. Elicitation with methyl jasmonate enhanced the production to 31.41 ± 3.10 mg/g DW (4.2-fold) in C. indicum and 51.44 ± 0.10 mg/g DW in A. ebracteatus (3.2-fold). The appropriate conditions for elicitation were 100 µM methyl jasmonate and 8 days exposure time. In addition, this is the first report of in vitro verbascoside production from these two plants. In vitro culture accumulated verbacoside up to 44.8-fold higher than intact plants. Thus, they can be the efficient and sustainable alternatives for production of verbascoside.