Effects of Rate Limiting Factors on Vitamin E Production Using Safflower Cells

Abstract

Plant cell culture, compared with field plantation, is useful to produce valuable materials originated from plant metabolism in large scale and in stable operation at any environmental disturbances. Production of vitamin E by safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) cell culture is one of the interesting application of the plant cell culture. Vitamin E is used as an antioxidant in foods and pharmaceutical ingredients. Alphatocopherol has the highest biological activity among eight vitamin E analogs which include four tocopherols and four tocotrienols. Safflower has higher amount of α-tocopherol content than other vegetable sources such as soy bean, cotton seed and sunflower seed. Tocopherols are usually obtained by chemical synthesis or by extraction from vegetable sources. The compounds obtained by chemical synthesis are in the form of racemic (dl-)mixture, whereas those from natural sources are d-isomers. The physiological activity of (d-)α-tocopherol is 1.36 times greater than that of racemic (dl-)α-tocopherol. Therefore, tocopherols from natural sources are to be preferred.