K. B. Rameshkumar
Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute, India
Title: Phytochemical Diversity of the Flora of the Western Ghats-Mass Spectrometric Evaluation
Biography
Biography: K. B. Rameshkumar
Abstract
The Western Ghats, one among the 34 global biodiversity hotspots, harbor nearly 7500 flowering plants, of which 1250 are endemic to the region. The present study reports the phytochemical diversity of selected plants of the Western Ghats through hyphenated mass spectrometry techniques. LC-MS studies of 13 Garcinia species revealed distribution of bioactive constituents such as biflavonoids, xanthones and acids, while GC-MS studies reported the genus as rich source of volatile terpenoids and aliphatic compounds. Distribution of piperamides, phenolics and terpenoids in the fruits and leaves of ten Piper species were studied by various LC-MS methods. Direct analysis in real time mass spectrometry (DART-MS) has been found as a rapid and reliable tool for demarcation of the medicinal herbs Piper nigrum, P. longum and P. chaba. Also the chemotaxonomic marker compounds were determined for Piper species based on leaf volatile chemical studies through GC-MS. Several new natural sources of aroma compounds such as camphor and linalool were discovered through the GC-MS studies of Cinnamomum species from the Western Ghats. The hepatotoxic phenyl propanoid coumarin in cinnamon samples (C. verum) were found within the tolerable daily intake limit by UHPLC-ESI-Qqq-LIT-MS method. HPLC-QTOF-MS studies on the distribution of phorbol esters in Euphorbia species revealed that the toxic phorbol ester TPA was absent, while the cytotoxic ester prostatin was present in the all the 13 Euphorbia species studied. More than 80% of the endemic flowering plants of the Western Ghats region are hitherto uninvestigated for their chemical constituents and the present study highlights the application of various hyphenated MS techniques in chemical profiling of the unexplored flora.