Abstract

Wild strains of Agrobacterium rhizogenes were used to induce hairy roots from Eurycoma longifolia, a high value medicinal plant in South-East Asia. Among 5 wild strains of A. rhizogenes tested, 3 strains namely MAFF 210265, MAFF 301726 and MAFF 720002 exhibited the ability to induce hairy roots from E. longifolia. After many unsuccessful attempts to produce hairy roots from this recalcitrant plant, hairy roots were successfully initiated, through infecting the hypocotyls region of this plant. The generated hairy roots were observed to be thin, non-geotropic, hairy and brittle in appearance. Amplification of the deoxyribonucleic acid(DNA) fragments which is about 1100 bp using rol genes that extended between rol C and Dgene sequence by Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method confirmed the integration of the portions of transferred deoxyribonucleic acid (T-DNA) into the transformed hairy roots. Generating hairy roots in E. longifolia will be highly beneficial mainly to the pharmaceutical industry as through the hairy root induction increased the amount of valuable secondary metabolites which is directly linked to its root differentiation can be achieved from low biomass starting material. This is the first report on hairy root induction from the medicinally eminent plant, E. longifolia using wild type strains of A. rhizogenes.

Key words: Eurycoma longifolia, hairy roots, transformation, wild strains of Agrobacterium rhizogenes.