Growing bulbs to harvest valuable constituents
Growing bulbs for pharmaceuticals rather than for flowers; this is less strange than it seems. Applied Plant Research is searching for valuable constituents in daffodils and tulips and investigates how extraction of such substances can be made profitable.
Daffodil is a good candidate as remedy for people with Alzheimer’s. The bulb contains galantamin which in some people with dementia makes amnesia less serious. It would then be logical to specifically grow the bulb to serve as raw material for the medicine. But then the concentration must be so high that it is profitable to extract the substance.
Increase concentration
Scientists have therefore worked out at which moment during cultivation concentration is highest and in which part of the plant. They have also tested measures to increase the concentration. Unfortunately, possibilities to achieve this appear to be restricted. Higher nitrogen fertilisation does increase the concentration to some extent and the concentration also increases when the bulb is kept in storage for a longer period of time.
Valuable constituents in tulip
Tulips also contain a valuable constituent: this strengthens plant defence against fungi and is also suitable as raw material for bioplastics: tulipalin. High concentrations of tulipalin (or in fact its precursor tuliposid) are found in the resin excreted by tulip bulbs that are in storage exposed to ethylene. This resin is a clear viscous liquid containing many sugars.
Making extraction profitable
The scientist are investigating how production and extraction of such constituents can be made profitable. Utilisation of the waste flows of flower bulbs is making a positive contribution. Bulb growers must now still pay for the disposal of their 70 000 tonnes of bulb material. And it is of course important that the recovery of such constituents is industrially feasible and that markets are interested.
In this research PPO is cooperating closely with Leiden University and Holland Biodiversity.