Resurrecting the Medicinal Uses of Brassica oleracea Seed: Combining Genotypic Information with Growth Protocols to Promote Antiinflammatory Chemicals

In order to develop easy to find, and easy to grow, affordable medicinal plants we investigated the potential chemical constituencies and antiinflammatory chemical production of public varieties of Broccoli (Brassica Oleracea Italica) made stress resistant. While many varieties of broccoli have antiinflammatory chemicals in the seeds, we sought to greatly enhance phenylpropanoids and glucoraphanin in 300,000 seeds by EMS mutagenesis and a stress-inducing growth protocol, post-EMS treatment. EMS mutagenesis occurred in the dark. After treatment, seeds were germinated and then on day 5, we scored ~58,000 surivivors. The survivors were treated with stressful levels of abiotic signals, then were subjected to a simple but specific growth protocol. The resultant population of survivors was scored three weeks later, and was only 0.05% of the beginning population, where most of the survivors were hardy and had presented altered pigmentation. Leaf punch disks of survivors revealed by chemical and absorbance analysis that these methods produced more chemicals per mass of the desired chemical groups. Three types of survivor phenotypes are observed and are being further characterized. Plants are being selfed in the expectation that these lines can be further studied and undergo analytical chemistry to identify exact constituents in the sprouts, for an affordable and compact way to obtain potent medicinal chemicals that have been implicated as being anti-cancer and antiinflammatory. These lines are compared to untreated heirloom broccoli varieties for chemical constituents.