Production of Red Pigment from the Root of Morinda angustifolia Roxb. var. scabridula Craib. by Root Cell Culture

Antraquinone is a group of natural red dye found in the root of Morinda sp. which is available in the upper north of Thailand and has been widely used on cotton dyeing. Recently, interest in natural dyes has increased and there is a need to find suitable alternative sources of natural dyes. We have studied one alternative to increase the production of anthraquinone dye by root cell culture of Morinda angustifolia Roxb. var. scabridula Craib. The major components of the red pigment extracted from the root of this plant was purified and analyzed for the chemical structure and was found to be an anthraquinone pigment morindone. Uncontaminated root cells were obtained by growing the Morinda seed on Murashige and Skoog agar medium(MS).The roots were cut into 2.5 mm. pieces and grown in fresh MS medium to get callus. The callus fully proliferation on a modified Gamborg’s B5 medium supplemented with 40 g/l succinic acid, 0.1 mg/l kinetin, 0.2 mg/l auxin and 20 g/l sucrose cultured in shake flask 100 rpm at 25 °C for 3 months gave root cells only 0.14 g dry weight whereas the callus cultured on B 5 agar at the same condition gave 1.22 g dry cells within one month. The cultivated callus contained red and yellow pigments. Extraction of the pigment from the cultured cells and separated by Thin Layer Chromatography with the same solvent system as what had been used to separate pigment in the plant’s root extract and gave two major components with Rf values comparable to the red pigment extracted from Morinda plant’s root. The production of anthraquinone dye from root cells cultured for 5 months was 1.4 times of the cells cultured for 3 months and could produce 0.6 times of the dye from the root of 2-3 years old plant.