Nitric oxide and reactive oxygen species are important signal molecules that play key roles in plant defense responses. We investigated the involvement of nitric oxide elicitation in the synthesis of secondary metabolites within the adventitious roots of Echinacea purpurea. When roots were treated with 100 I~M sodium nitroprusside (SNP), an exogenous nitric oxide producer, the accumulation of phenolics, flavonoids, and caffeic acid derivatives was enhanced. This level of SNP also induced an antioxidant defense, as indicated by increases in superoxide dismutase, ascorbate peroxidase, and ascorbic acid, along with decreases in hydrogen peroxide, lipid peroxidation, and dehydroascorbate/ascorbic acid. However, a higher concentration (250 ~M SNIP) acted as a pro-oxidant, thereby raising the levels of hydrogen peroxide, lipid peroxidation, and dehydroascorbate/ascorbic acid while diminishing ascorbic acid, ascorbate peroxidase, and the accumulation of secondary metabolites compared with our observations at 100 BM SNR Therefore, we conclude that eliciting E. purpurea adventitious roots with a concentration of 100 ~M SNP is beneficial to their accumulation of secondary metabolites. Keywords: antioxidant defense, bioreactor, Echinacea purpurea, elicitation, nitric oxide, secondary metabolitesThe production of secondary metabolites via plant cell/ organ cultures is an important area of investigation because of their commercial and medicinal importance. However, these compounds exist at only very low concentrations in plants, which limits their yields. Plant cells respond to various biotic and abiotic elicitors by activating a wide array of reactions [viz., ion fluxes across the plasma membrane, synthesis of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and phosphorylation and dephosphorylation of proteins]. These are all putative components of signal transduction pathways that lead to elicitor-induced defense responses, e.g., the activation of defense genes and hypersensitive cell death (Dietrich et al., 1990; N(~rnberger et al., 1994;Baker and Orlandi, 1995). It has been suggested that ROS alone cannot mediate a sufficient disease resistance response in plants, but in combination with nitric oxide (NO) can function synergistically to activate a stronger response (Wang and Wu, 2005). Therefore, NO is a diffusible, bioactive signalling molecule (Beligni and Lamattina, 2000;Neill et al., 2003; RomeroPuertas et al., 2004).The synthesis of secondary metabolites in plants is believed to be part of their defense response against biotic (pathogenic attack) and abiotic stresses. Applying the elicitors obtained from microorganisms (fungi and bacteria) is an effective strategy for improving the productivity of seconclary metabolites in plant cell/organ cultures (Roberts and Shuler, 1997). The generation of NO is a hallmark of such responses to fungal elicitors (Delledonne et al., 1998;Durner et al., 1998). NO has multiple functions, e.g., the stimulation of seed germination (Sarath et al., 2006), formation of adventitious roots (Pagnussat et al....