Integrated yield and productivity enhancement strategy for biotechnological production of Azadirachtin by suspension culture of Azadirachta indica

Abstract

Azadirachtin is considered as the best pesticide among the biopesticides available in market for crop protection due to its broad spectrum activity and varying mode of action. To meet the increasing demand and primarily due to geographical and variability limitations, its biotechnological production from plant cell culture has gained momentum in last two decades. The major requirement for economic production is to increase the yield as well as the productivity of Azadirachtin production in the bioreactor. In general, different strategies used in the plant cell culture result in either yield or productivity enhancement. The simultaneous increase of both the parameters has remained a challenging task, particularly in plant cell cultivations. In this work, an integrated approach has been adopted by combining the various yield as well as productivity enhancement strategies, i.e. coupling the mathematical model-derived nutrient-feeding strategy for continuous cultivation with elicitation, precursor addition, and permeabilization, etc. With this integrated approach, a yield of 0.0122 g/g and a productivity of 7.25 × 10 -4 g/l/h Azadirachtin were obtained, which is so far highest in plant cell suspension culture of Azadirachta indica to the best of our knowledge. Copyright © 2010 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.