Stevioside sweetener optimization through stress cultivation for anti-dental caries applications

Overview

Biosolve Innovations is advancing the cultivation of Stevia rebaudiana, a plant renowned for its natural sweetener compounds stevioside and rebaudioside. This research investigates how controlled environmental stressors, including mild salinity, drought, and heavy metal exposure, can be strategically applied to increase the yield of these valuable secondary metabolites. Beyond sweetener production, the project explores the potential of steviol glycosides to combat dental caries, positioning stevioside as a dual-purpose natural ingredient for both food formulation and oral health applications.

Technical specifications

• Stress-based cultivation methodology: Hydroponic, soil, and sand culture systems used to evaluate the impact of NaCl concentration, water stress, and chromium exposure on steviol glycoside biosynthesis
• Cultivar-specific response analysis: Multiple Stevia rebaudiana cultivars tested to identify which varieties respond most favorably to mild salinity stress for enhanced sweetener yield
• Combinatorial stress evaluation: Ongoing work to understand the cross-talk among salinity, drought, and heavy metal stressors and their combined effects on the plant metabolome
• Biomass-linked quantification: Measurement of stevioside and rebaudioside yields relative to plant biomass to optimize harvest efficiency
• Anti-caries validation: Planned evaluation of steviol glycoside effects on dental caries to establish oral health applications

Technology readiness level

Validation has been completed across three culture systems: hydroponic salinity stress testing on multiple cultivars, soil-based salt and water stress trials on two cultivars, and sand culture experiments with chromium stress. Future validation will focus on adapting these findings to Indian growing environments, quantifying glycoside yields at scale, elucidating the mechanistic basis of stress-induced metabolite enhancement, and confirming the anti-dental caries properties of steviol glycosides.