Abstract

Perilla frutescens, a plant of the Lamiaceae, is commonly used for traditional medicine to treat diseases (cold, headache, cough, tympanites, poisoning, ...) because it contains many secondary compounds with bioactivities. Roots, stems and leaves of P. frutescens have been extracted with ethanol. These extracts have also been investigated antioxidant by DPPH method and antibacterial by agar-well-diffusion method. The results showed that these extracts possess antioxidant and antibacterial activity. By specific reactions, we found that phenols, flavonoids, saponins, alkaloids and glycosides were contained in all extracts of P. frutescens, but triterpenoids were only found in leaf extract. These secondary compounds are involved in the antioxidant and antibacterial activity of P. frutescens. Next, hairy roots of P. frutescens were induced by Agrobacterium rhizogenes ATCC 15834. The results suggested that leaves were the highest-efficiency (67.67 ± 3.51 % of samples produced hairy roots). 20 minutes of immersion and 72 hours of co-culture are optimal for induction of hairy roots. These results are a pre-requisition for further studies related to hairy root cultures aimed production of bioactive compounds.