Callus induction and cell line establishment from various explants of kaempferia galanga

Kaempferia galanga or also known as cekur is a valuable traditional herb for folk medication. The secondary metabolites of this plant have various pharmaceutical properties such as vasorelaxant and antinociceptive effect. The conventional planting method of this plant is insufficient to fulfill the increasing demand of this plant for the production of secondary metabolites thus in vitro culture technique was used. This project focused on selection of elite cell lines of K. galanga to be used for the production of medicinally important bioactive compounds in large scale by using bioreactors. The callus derived from the root, leaf sheath and rhizome of this plant made up a total of 26 cell lines. These calli were induced and maintained on Murashige and Skoog (1962) medium supplemented with 1.0 mg/L 2, 4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2, 4-D) and 30 g/L sucrose, solidified with 7.7 g/L agar, and subcultured every 21 days for six subculture cycles. From these 26 cell lines, only eight cell lines could be selected as stable lines and categorized into fast, intermediate and slow growing lines based on their Growth Index. Among the explants, leaf sheath gave the most stable and fast growing lines. This is an effective tool for conservation of this important medicinal plant and to make the source of active compounds available throughout the year. The selected cell lines can be used as the material source for future preparation of cell suspension culture of K. galangal.