Grindelia pulchella
callus and cell suspension cultures were established from seedling leaves. When several phytoregulator supplementations were assayed in solid Murashige and Skoog medium containing 3% (w/v) of sucrose (MS medium), combinations of indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) and N
6-benzylaminopurine (BA) resulted the most appropriate conditions to generate fast growing friable calli with detectable levels of grindelic acid. Moreover, the same basal media supplemented with 20.0 μM IBA/4.4 μM BA was found to be optimal for cell growth in submerged cultures (μ
max = 0.26 days
-1) while the addition of 20.0 μM IBA/18.0 μM BA resulted in a relative higher metabolite production (4.55 mg/gDW) when the inocula was 5% (v/v). Furthermore, three different stress factors and combinations of them were used to elicit cell suspensions. These experiments demonstrated that the combination of CuSO
4 and dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) increase the grindelic acid production to 2.63 mg/gDW in the elicited essay versus 0.756 mg/gDW in the control, at expense of cell growth. In contrast, the addition of jasmonic acid (JA) alone and combined with DMSO neither affected cell growth nor grindelic acid accumulation.