plants bioactive compounds consistancy - how to manange to get a consistent of plant bioactives (Oct/23/2009 )

hi guys,

i am dealing on isolation of antimicrobial bioactive compounds from plant. however, through out my study i found that responsible bioactive compounds from the bioactive fraction always different in different batch of sample collection. so it is so difficult to hv a consistant bioactive supply. Anyone of you hving experiences on these and how to mangange this kind of problem? what the variable that should be taken more in order to hv repeatabe bioactive pattern in the bioactive fraction?

thank for your help guys~~~

It could be any one of a number of things - are the plants cultured under the same conditions (e.g. glasshouse) or out in the field or wild?
-is there some factor that could trigger the production of the antibiotic? e.g. bacterial insult of the plant, temperature, humidity, time of day/year... etc.

Then you can get into the sample preparation - same conditions all the time? Do you take the same amount of time each time you extract? Does the compound degrade? Is it a mix of substances rather than just one compound?

could this variation also be caused by genetic variation in the plants you are sampling?

So aside from sampling the plant at the same time, under the same conditions, you might want to look at propagating some clones/cuttings

hmm... i the sample preparation and componds extraction already standardized. the problem is on sample collection. the sample is collected from the farm itself. i cant really get in a very large quantity at once. so sample is taken batch by batch. is not cell culture or lab propagation. so for sure genetically it have variation. but wondering how people normally control it. Instead of compounds.... the mixture of compounds after purification is different. make me wonder a lot~~

environmental factors which vary during the year (eg day/night, temperature, moisture) affect plant cycles. production of one thing will slow as production of something else will increase.

if you want batch to batch uniformity then you will have to collect each batch at the same time of year.

or you can grow the plants in a controlled and unvarying environment.

mdfenko: ya.. thx a lot.. i knw these factor... but it is hardly to control those kind of things... especially envoronment unless we make it tiisue culture or in-house control growing...

however, my research will more emphasis on the bioactive compounds where these is too many thing to take care of in controling these kind of viarable... even next year it cant be garantee that would hv the same weather and more importantly thr microenvironment....

so thinking to discuss see any solution that can be used to minimize the viarable itself~~~ the only solution i hv thought so far is i collect a bulk of sample and do the extraction at once to yield lot of extracts and further it down~~~