Mass Production of Panax ginseng C.A. Mey. Root Cultures in Indonesia

Panax ginseng C.A. Mey. is one of the most well-known plants in traditional medicine that contains bioactive compounds called ginsenosides. It is widely used as raw material in many phar-maceutical industries in Indonesia. However, to supply for this purpose, they still rely on imports. PT. Kalbe Farma (through its subsidiary, PT. Bintang Toedjoe), University of Surabaya (Ubaya), and Hanbang-Bio Laboratory (holding company of Kyung Hee University) established the Kalbe Ubaya Hanbang-Bio Laboratory (KUH Lab), a collaboration initiated to achieve the independence of raw materials. This laboratory is devoted to developing the plant tissue culture protocol for the mass production of P. ginseng root cultures. This paper is the first report of in vitro P. ginseng culture in Indonesia. The initial stage of the mass production focused on optimizing the culture conditions: inoculum weight (100 g, 150 g, 200 g), medium volume (12 L, 13 L, 14 L), medium formulation (“A”, “B”), and incubation temperature (15 °C to 20 °C and 21°C to 25 °C). Based on the biomass yield and ginsenosides content, it was concluded that the optimum growth condition was 150 g of the initial inoculum grown in 13 L of media using formulation B and incubation at 21°C to 25 °C. In the long-term, KUH Lab aims to produce P. ginseng on an industrial scale to sufficiently supply the demands for P. ginseng in the country. Furthermore, this laboratory also intends to make standardized Indonesian herbal materials by using plant tissue culture.