S25 - Session O4 - Lavandula latofolia Medik grown under Led emitting diode light technology. An initial approach

Authors: Maria J. Jordán *, Gustavo Javier Cáceres-Cevallos, Cristina Martínez-Conesa, María Quílez-Simón, Pascual Romero-Espinar, Inmaculada García-Aledo

Spike lavender ( Lavandula latifolia Medik) is an aromatic-medicinal plant, native to the Mediterranean region. It is cultivated for the production of essential oil, with Spain being the largest producer with 150n200 t per year. In despite of this, this species has not been submitted to preselection yet, so a wide intraspecific variability among individuals can be found. Nowadays, within breeding programs Led Emitting Diode (LED) technology is widely used for horticultural and fruit crop improvement. Some authors indicate that LEDs could influence the response of plants growth, as well as the production of chemical compounds. Furthermore, exposure to different LED spectrums could be used for inducing changes in molecular structure of plants, causing an upgrading of their ability to overcome stressful situations. To our knowledge, this technology has not been developed for this species yet. Thus, our goal was to make a preliminary study of the effect of different wavelength of light LED (blue, red and white) on the growth, polyphenolic profile and antioxidant activity of spike lavender. In the study, plants of spike lavender from in vitro culture were acclimated under greenhouse conditions for two months. Subsequently, ten plants were assigned randomly to three homogeneous groups and transferred to LED light chamber for 35 days. One group of plants were exposed to blue light, other group to red light and the third one to white light (control) with a photon flux density (PFD) of 35 μmol m -2 s -1 . Growth parameters, antioxidant activity and polyphenolic profile were measured in each experimental group. As major results, plants exposed to blue light showed more vegetative growth than red and control, as well as, a higher antioxidant activity. Nevertheless, plants exposed to red light showed a significative increase in σ-coumaric acid in comparison with blue and control treatments.