Abstract

Catharanthus roseus is a well known medicinal plant. It produces several phytocompounds and many of which show anticancerous properties. However the yields of these compounds are very low. Recently, induction of C. roseus hairy roots by Agrobacterium rhizogenes, is interested as a promising tool for the enhanced production of these metabolites. In this research, wounded leaves from four strains of C. roseus were infected with various strains of A. rhizogenes isolated in Vietnam to provide more information about the induction efficiency of hairy roots. In this experiment, after 3 weeks of infection, the presence of rolB gene in hairy roots were analysed by polymerase chain reaction. All of 13 A. rhizogenes strains could induce the formation of hairy root in C. roseus. The A. rhizogenes C18 strain had the highest induction percentage in C. roseus VIN002, VIN005, and VIN072 with 59.4 %, 50.3 %, and 40.0 % respectively. And the same result was ontained at 26.7% by A. Rhizogenes C26 for C. roseus VIN077 rhizogenes strains. This result identified two A. rhizogenes strains C18 and C26 as potential transformation tools for hairy root production from C. roseus.