Influence of Light, Temperature, and Macronutrients on Growth and Scopolamine Biosynthesis in Duboisia species.

Scopolamine is used in the pharmaceutical industry as a precursor in the organic synthesis of different classes of important active substances and is extracted in large scale from field grown plants. Previous research revealed that plant growth as well as production of scopolamine and its derivatives varies strongly depending on abiotic factors. However, only a small amount of systematic research has been done on the influence of environmental conditions on scopolamine and biomass production, so far.

Discrimination of wild types and hybrids of Duboisia myoporoides and Duboisia leichhardtii at different growth stages using H NMR-based metabolite profiling and tropane alkaloids-targeted HPLC-MS analysis.

Duboisia species, which belong to the family of Solanaceae, are commercially cultivated in large scale, as they are main source of the pharmaceutically-used active compound scopolamine. In this study, H NMR-based metabolite profiling linking primary with secondary metabolism and additional quantification via HPCL-MS with special focus on the tropane alkaloids were applied to compare leaf and root extracts of three wild types and two hybrids of Duboisia myoporoides and D. leichhardtii at different developmental stages grown under controlled conditions in climate chambers and under agricultural field plantation.