Abstract

Zhenghao Qian, Ke Gong, Ling Zhang, Jianbing Lv, Fuyuan Jing, Yueyue Wang, Shaobo Guan, Guofeng Wang and Kexuan Tang*

Artemisinin is an effective anti-malarial drug extracted from Artemisia annua L. Due to the low content of artemisinin in A. annua, great efforts have been devoted to improve artemisinin production. Here we report a simple and efficient procedure to enhance artemisinin content in A. annua by seeding to salinity stress. Our result shows that artemisinin content in the plant treated with 4 - 6 g/l NaCl could be significantly enhanced (up to 2 - 3% dry weight) compared to that in control plant (1% dry weight).