Influence of fungal elicitor on bio production of Azadirachtin in cell cultures of Azadirachta indica

The present investigation involves the influence of elicitor feeding on bioproduction of important secondary metabolites in cell suspension cultures of Azadirachta indica. The content of azadirachtin in MS media supplemented with NAA (1 mg/l) + Kinetin (0.5 mg/l) and Dicamba (2 mg/l) + Kinetin (1 mg/l) hormonal combinations was found to be (0.42±0.04 mg/l) and (0.30 mg/l±0.07) respectively. Out of these two combinations, NAA (1 mg/l) + Kinetin (0.5 mg/l) combination was found optimum for bioproduction of azadirachtin. The addition of Fusarium solani significantly enhanced the amount of azadirachtin over control cultures. The cell extracts (CE) and culture filtrates (CF) of Fusarium solani were added in different concentrations (5% v/v and 10% v/v) to the cell cultures of A. indica separately, while maintaining suitable control. There is no significant change in the amount of azadirachtin between control and cell extract (CE) treated cultures. The addition of culture filtrate (5% v/v) of Fusarium solani showed significant improvement in bioproduction of azadirachtin (0.87±0.12 mg/l) over to control cultures (0.38±0.07 mg/l). It showed approximately 2-fold improvement in the bioproduction of azadirachtin. Present study constitute an important milestone in realizing commercial production of these metabolites.