Carrot hairy roots: Factories for secondary metabolite production

Abstract

The use of hairy root (HR) cultures for the production of secondary metabolites is growing due to the high demand for bioactive food ingredients of plant origin that either have high nutritional value or act as powerful antioxidants, protecting the human body from oxidative processes generated by cellular metabolism. Barba-Espín et al. (2020) have developed an efficient protocol for establishment of anthocyanin-producing HR cultures from black carrots. In fact, fast-growing HR cultures obtained from root explants elicited with ethephon, an ethylenereleasing compound, substantially increased the anthocyanin content and the production of hydroxycinnamic acids. These results place these HR cultures as promising efficient systems to produce anthocyanins and phenolic compounds that have beneficial effects for human health.