Thevetia peruviana is a small tree that produces several compounds with pharmaceutical application, among which peruvoside could be highlighted. However, these compounds are produced in low concentration in the plant, making it important to develop strategies such as plant cell culture and elicitation to obtain higher quantities of the desired product. In this work, cell suspension cultures of T. peruviana were established in four different culture media: Murashige-Skoog (MS), half MurashigeSkoog (half MS), Schenk-Hildebrandt (SH), and Gamborg (B5) to study their effect on cell growth. Cell growth kinetics were studied in SH medium, and the extracellular peruvoside production during the culture time was determined. The best culture medium for the establishment of cell suspension cultures was MS with a growth index of 3.17±0.2 g g −1 inoculum. The cell growth kinetics showed the four characteristic growth phases of a cell culture (lag, exponential, stationary, and death), and during none of these phases was it possible to observe peruvoside production. The elicitor effect of methyljasmonate (MeJ) was studied in cell suspension cultures established in SH medium. The effect of MeJ concentration and the time in which it should be applied were determined. The best results were obtained at a concentration of 100 mg l −1 of MeJ applied at the beginning of the culture, which induced a peruvoside production of 8.93 mg l −1 medium. The current results are the first report of an in vitro peruvoside production system.

Lulo is a species of great importance to the fruticulture of Colombia, but has significant phytosanitary problems that require an aggressive breeding program oriented toward the production of genotypes with tolerance to phytopathogens. These programs need to establish highly efficient mass plant propagation protocols, such as somatic embryogenesis. This study focused on research on the somatic embryogenesis of lulo using kinetin, naphthalene acetic acid-NAA (Plant Growth Regulators, PGRs), and different sucrose concentrations in a MS medium. Two lulo varieties, Solanum quitoense var. septentrionale and S. quitoense var. quitoense, and two explant types (hypocotyl and cotyledon) were used, incubated in dark conditions at 25±2°C. The highest production percentage of the embryos was obtained when 50 mM of NAA were added to the medium with sucrose (50.0 and 263.1 mM) for the two explant types used. In lulo with spines, the highest percentage of embryonic structures (50%) was observed with cotyledonary leaf explants and 50 mM of NAA ; while in the spineless lulo, the embryonic structures were observed in the same type of explant with 50 mM of NAA + 263.1 mM of sucrose (32%).

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