Elicitation is a method making use of protective mechanisms of plants to increase the production of secondary metabolites in plants and cultures in vitro .Salicylic acid acts in plants as an inducer of the expression of protective proteins and it can be thus included into biotic elicitors.That is why the present paper examined the effects of five concentrations of salicylic acid on the production of anthracene derivatives by a three-year and a nine-year old culture derived from the root of the intact plant Rheumpalmatum L.The culture was cultivated on Murashige-Skoog medium with an addition of 10 mg.l –1 of α -naphthylacetic acid.It follwos from the results that increase in production after elicitation is higher in the three-year old culture than in the nine-year old one and elicitation of suspension culture is more successful than elicitation of callus culture.The maximal content of anthracene derivatives (1.418 %),detected by a photometric essay according to PhBS 4,was demonstrated after a 48-hour action of 1 mM aqueous solution of salicylic acid,when production was increased by 101 %in comparison with the control.

        Key words: Rheum palmatum L.–callus and suspension culture – anthracene derivatives – elicitation –salicylic acid