Spaceflight breeding could improve the volatile constituents of Andrographis paniculata

Abstract The seeds of Andrographis paniculata carried by the Chinese recoverable satellite named “Chang Zheng”, “Shen Zhou’’ and from the parallel ground-based seeds were selected as the samples. Seeds were flown under the space condition for 22 h and 33 days respectively. After returning to earth, the seeds carried by the different satellites and the parallel-ground control were cultivated for three consecutive generations under the same conditions. In this study, a chromatogram was obtained and contents of the volatile constituents in the samples were investigated on a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS). In addition, the main components of A. paniculata were analyzed by principal component analysis (PCA) and the relationship between four different strains and different generations of A. paniculata was evaluated by hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) based on contents (%) of volatile constituents in A. paniculata. The results not only showed that displayed the contents of the volatile compounds (2-methyl-butanal, 3-methyl-butanal, 2-methyl-propanal) increasing with the number of generations in the spaceflight samples but showed the variation of the kinds of volatile constituents. The changes in the kind of volatile components of A. paniculata after spaceflight were firstly reported. There were 43 chemical constituents, which included aldehydes, acids, furans, ketones and alcohols were identified according to their mass spectra determined in both negative and positive ion modes. The CK and H118, D85 and H99 strains exhibited high similarity of volatile composition. The research provided the scientific data for spaceflight breeding of medicinal plants and indicated that space technology may be a new and effective way for the breeding and cultivation of A. paniculata.