Özet:

INTRODUCTION: Quinidine has pharmaceutical importance as antimalaria, antiarrhythmia, antimicrobes, anticancer, antioxidant, astringent, and bitter flavouring. Quinidine is in high demand, yet its production from the quina tree (C. calisaya) bark is limited. The quinidine production from quina tree fungal endophytes, namely Aspergillus sydowii, Diaporthe sp., D. lithicola, Fusarium oxysporum and F. solani is lower than quinidine content in the tree bark. An attempt to increase the quinidine production from those fungi was carried out in this study. METHODS: Quinidine was produced by in vitro culturing of the fungal endophytes in Potato Dextrose Broth (PDB) medium at different culture conditions, i.e. a combination of initial pH medium 6.2 or 6.8 with/without light in static condition for 21 days incubation at room temperature. Production under natural daylight in non-modifying pH of PDB medium was used as control. At the end of the incubation period, the mycelial mass was separated from the filtrate. The dried biomass and chloroform extracted filtrate were weighed. Quinidine in the extract was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively using HPLC. RESULTS: Quinidine production was affected by both light and initial pH of the medium depending on the fungi. Significant increment of quinidine production, about 1.1-9.3 fold from its respective control was obtained from all fungi at their optimum conditions. Quinidine production on most of the fungi was significantly correlated with their biomass production but not with their extract production of those five fungi, F. solani that was cultured in PDB medium with initial pH 6.2 and under continuous light incubation produced the highest concentration of quinidine with low biomass. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The quinidine production of all fungal endophytes studied was affected by the culture condition. F. solani is the most prospective fungus to be used as quinidine production agents.

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