Chapter 14
Hairy Root Culture as a Biotechnological
Tool inC. sativa
Imane Wahby, Juan Manuel Caba and Francisco Ligero
Abstract Hemp (Cannabis sativaL.), a difficult to transform plant, has been
effectively infected with either Ri or Ti plasmid-bearing agrobacteria and several
transformed tissues (tumors and hairy roots) were established and its transgenic
nature confirmed. Hypocotyl of intact seedlings was the most responsive material
and the response depended on both bacterial strain and plant variety. Transformed
tissues were cultured and stabilized in vitro and showed the characteristic traits of
fast and phytohormone-independent growth as well as high incidence of lateral
branching and abundance of root hairs in the case of roots. The presence of some
nitrogen compounds, metabolites of pharmaceutical implication, has been assayed
in these transformed roots. Atropine, choline and muscarine were detected at
quantitative levels in transformed roots and untransformed plant material ofC.
sativa. Further, the three compounds are present in hairy roots at concentrations
quantitatively higher than in untransformed control tissues. Finally, hemp trans-
formed roots exhibited a high callusing response, with calli that grew vigorously
and developed compact and green nodular areas on the surface, a priori indicative
of organogenesis capacity, but that were unable of shoot regeneration.
14.1 Introduction
The many usages of hemp (Cannabis sativaL.) including medicine, food and
textile/paperfiber are known from antiquity (curiously thefirst copy of Bible was
written on hemp paper). Now, novel applications of hemp like composite materials
and geotextiles have been developed (Karus and Vogt 2004 ). High quality seed oil
I. Wahby
MAScIR Biotechnology, Rabatshore, 303 Business Center,
11100 Sala al Jadida, Morocco
J.M. CabaF. Ligero (&)
Departamento de Fisiología Vegetal, Facultad de Farmacia,
Universidad de Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain
e-mail:[email protected]
©Springer International Publishing AG 2017
S. Chandra et al. (eds.), Cannabis sativaL. - Botany and Biotechnology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-54564-6_14
299