Quantification of Strigolactones

Abstract

Strigolactones (SLs) are a family of natural products produced by the plants as shoot branching factors and responsible for the induction of hyphal branching in arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. They have been also used by parasitic plant seeds as stimulators of their germination as a strategy to ensure the presence of a host in the environment. For all these bioactivities, SLs have kept the attention of the researchers in the last years, increasing the number of published papers, and have opened new areas of research in the multiple roles that they play in the rhizosphere and as plant hormones. However, the low amount of them produced by plants and their rapid degradability make it crucial to develop fast analytical methods with very low limits of quantification. Herein, it is described a protocol for the development of an LC-MS/MS method for the quantification of SLs, using GR24 as IS, in roots exudates and extracts.

Keywords: Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi; Carotenoids; LC-MS/MS; Parasitic weeds; Quantification method; Strigolactones.