Composition containing melatonin as an active ingredient for promoting duckweed growth and metabolite production

Melatonin-based culture medium technology for increasing duckweed biomass and bioactive metabolites

This technology provides a culture medium composition containing low-concentration melatonin as an active ingredient to promote the growth and metabolite production of duckweed (Spirodela polyrhiza), along with a cultivation method using this medium. It focuses on increasing both biomass and useful metabolites through exogenous melatonin.

Duckweed grows rapidly, with a doubling time of just 1.34 to 4.54 days, making it a highly promising resource for food, feed, pharmaceuticals, phytoremediation, and biofuels. However, there has been a lack of practical cultivation methods to simultaneously boost the productivity of biomass and bioactive metabolites in large-scale farming.

By adding exogenous melatonin to the culture medium, this technology significantly increases the total dry weight of duckweed and substantially boosts the per-cell content of bioactive metabolites such as GABA, dopamine, serotonin, ascorbic acid, and phytosterols. It can be applied to large-scale duckweed cultivation for cosmetics, food, feed, and pharmaceutical ingredients, allowing for higher yields of useful compounds within the same cultivation footprint.

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Key Features:

• Culture medium composition for promoting the growth of duckweed (Spirodela polyrhiza) containing melatonin at a final concentration of 0.1 to 20μM as an active ingredient
• Culture medium composition containing melatonin as an active ingredient to promote the production of metabolites such as GABA, ascorbic acid, dopamine, serotonin, campesterol, beta-sitosterol, and stigmasterol
• Step of cultivating duckweed in a medium containing 0.1 to 20μM of melatonin to promote duckweed growth or metabolite production
• Step of obtaining bioactive metabolites by cultivating duckweed in a melatonin-containing medium for 1 to 30 days

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