Studies on biochemical and medicinal properties of Stevia rebaudiana grown in vitro

Abstract

Stevia rebaudiana commonly called candy leaf belongs to the family of Asteraceae. In this preliminary research, we describe in vitro grown stevia plants in the basal MS medium for the quantification and identification of steviol glycosides by Agilent 1260 High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). The in vitro plants showed the presence of glycosides, stevioside and rebaudioside A and its percentage by mass were 6.79 % and 3.91 % in 0.01 g of leaf powder. These in vitro plants can be used as a raw material for the production of glycosides in high yield which is of medicinal importance. The different in vitro stevia leaf extracts prepared by using different solvents have shown better antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. For the antimicrobial activity, the ethanolic extract showed zone of inhibition with diameter of 3 to 7 mm on B. subtilis and maximum 1 mm on S. aureus and for the methanolic extract it was 3 to 4 mm for B. subtilis ATCC 6633 and maximum 1 mm for S. aureus. The IC50 value using DPPH assay method for studying antioxidant property of aqueous, ethanolic and methanolic stevia leaf extracts were found to be 68%, 77.77% and 71.17% respectively. The results obtained in the present study indicate that in vitro plants grown only in basal medium possess some similar properties like in vivo plants.