Turmeric, the fragrant and colorful spice used in a number of cuisines, has also had uses in traditional medicine, which are increasingly under investigation by formal scientific studies. Cultivation of turmeric is potentially threatened by increasing heat and drought stress in regions where it has long been cultivated, driven by global climate change. Plant scientists like CSUN Professor of Biology Chhandak Basu are working to understand how Curcuma longa, the plant that produces turmeric, can adapt to more stressful future conditions.
The latest such work is described in a new paper published in The Journal of Medicinally Active Plants. The project, part of a collaboration between the Basu Lab and researchers at the University of Mississippi, USDA-ARS, and Alabama A&M University, raised C. longa plants under three weeks of drought stress, and monitored their photosynthetic performance and production of curcuminoids, the compounds that may give turmeric its medicinal value. The authors, led by Basu Lab MSci alumna Bhiolina Bharadwaj, found that drought-stressed plants produced higher concentrations of curcuminoids, but also reduced photosynthetic activity. This might mean the plants produce higher quality product in dry conditions — but it may also mean they produce less overall.
The full article is available Open Access on the journal website.
Image: Curcurma longa, Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen (Wikimedia Commons)