Effect of Plant Nutrients on Antiradical Activity of In Vitro Cultivated Broccoli ( Brassica oleracea L . var . italica Plenk . )
Environmental conditions may have impact on plant metabolism, especially on secondary metabolism. As a result of different stress circumstance, plants have developed different protective mechanisms and major one is production of secondary metabolites. Plant growth conditions could be controlled and modified in in vitro plant culture, which usually results in higher or lower contents of secondary metabolites. We have established a rapid protocol for in vitro germination and cultivation of Brassica oleracea L. var. italica Plank. Three, ten, twenty and thirty days old seedlings, cultivated on three different Murashige-Skoog (MS) media, as well as two types of spontaneously induced calli were used for extraction. Ethanolic plant extracts were tested for their antioxidative potential using 2,2’-diphenyl-1picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging method. Extracts from three days old seedling demonstrated the highest antioxidative potential. On the other hand, extract of broccoli seedlings cultivated on basal MS medium have shown prooxidative properties that can be contribute to prooxidative properties of some unknown component in the presence of free transition metal ions, the type of oxidizable substrate in use, as well as to the biological environment in which they act. Article info Received: 06/12/2012 Accepted: 17/12/2012