African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 6 (12), pp. 1410-1413, 18 June 2007   

ISSN 1684–5315 © 2007 Academic Journals        

Full Length Research Paper

A simple and efficient procedure to enhance artemisinin content in Artemisia annua L. by seeding to salinity stress

Zhenghao Qian, Ke Gong, Ling Zhang, Jianbing Lv, Fuyuan Jing, Yueyue Wang, Shaobo Guan, Guofeng Wang and Kexuan Tang^*

School of Agriculture and Biology, School of Life Science and Technology, Fudan-SJTU-Nottingham Plant Biotechnology R&D Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, China.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: kxtang1@yahoo.com or kxtang1@163.com. Tel: 86-21-62932002. Fax: 86-21-62824073.

Accepted 4 May, 2007

Artemisinin is an effective anti-malarial drug extracted from Artemisia annua L. Due to the low content of artemisinin in A. annua, great efforts have been devoted to improve artemisinin production. Here we report a simple and efficient procedure to enhance artemisinin content in A. annua by seeding to salinity stress. Our result shows that artemisinin content in the plant treated with 4 - 6 g/l NaCl could be significantly enhanced (up to 2 - 3% dry weight) compared to that in control plant (1% dry weight).

Key words: Artemisia annua L., artemisinin, NaCl, salinity stress.