impacts of glutamic coated nanoparticles of iron oxide on in vitro cultured valeriana officinalis

Valeriana officinalis (valerian) is an ancient medicinal plant used for its various pharmacological influences such as sedative and analgesic effects on the nervous system. the application of nanoparticles as elicitors for stimulating the production of secondary metabolites in plant in vitro culture is a challenging issue. the synthesized glutamic-coated magnetic iron nanoparticles (glu-fe3o4 nps) were characterized through fesem-edx (field emission scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive x-ray), tem (transmission electron microscopy), dls (dynamic light scattering), ft-ir (fourier transform infrared spectrometer), and xrd (x-ray diffraction). in the in vitro micropropagation of valerian in the murashige and skoog (ms) medium, the seedlings of germinated seeds were treated with different concentrations of glu-fe3o4 nps (5 mg/l, 10 mg/l, 15 mg/l). in the current study, morphological characteristics of seedlings and the quantitative changes of total phenol, total flavonoid, photosynthetic pigments, antioxidant properties (via spectroscopy methods), volatile and phenolic compounds (through gc-ms and lc-ms methods) of treated plantlets were investigated. treatment with 10 and 15 mg/l of elicitor decreased the number of leaves of seedlings, and 5 mg/l treatment could increase the number of stomata in leaves in comparison to the control. although elicitor treatment could induce the production of some volatiles like elemene, endo-borneol, and junipene in the essential oil of plantlets, it made adverse impacts on their phenolic compounds. our findings provided evidence that glu-fe3o4 nps in optimum levels may improve the production of some volatile compounds and could be utilized as a novel elicitor for in vitro biosynthesis of precious metabolites in the micropropagation of medicinal plants.