Plants accumulate phytochemicals of high value

<?xml:namespace prefix = v ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" />

P<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

lants accumulate extractable organic substances, in quantities sufficient to be economically useful as active medicinal constituent for the ailment of various diseases. In addition to primary metabolites which occur generally in bulk volume concentrated in seeds and other vegetational storage organs, fulfill the needs for physiological development of plant itself due to their role in basic metabolism. Secondary metabolites are those compound which are not directly involved in the normal growth, development or reproduction of plant cell but are of greater importance because of their role in defense against predators and diseases( Luckner, 1972; Mann, 1978: William et al., 1989 Sharma et al., 2007). In plants, the malvonate and shikimate pathway are extensively involved in production of secondary metabolites and linked with primary metabolism bia Actyle-CoA and pentose phosphate pathway (Fig.6.1).Plants produce near about 50,000 types of secondary metabolites, in which 12000 types of alkaloids, 60 types of cynogenic glycosides, 15000 types of terpenes, 4000 types of flavonoids and 100 types of glucosinolates have already identified (Croteau et al., 2000 ).

Among the plant metabolites, alkaloids are specific molecules that have strong physiologic effects on living system. All the alkaloids are heterocyclic compounds containing one or more number of nitrogen (table 6.2).

Phytochemicals

S. No.	Name of phytochemical	Number
1.	Alkaloids	12000
2.	Cynogenic glycosides	60
3.	Glucosinolate	100
4.	Monoterpene	2500
5.	Sesquiterpene	5000
6.	Diterpene	2500
7.	Triterpene,saponin and steroids	5000
8.	Phenylpropanoids,coumarin and lignan	2000
9.	Flavonoids	4000
10.	Polyacetylene fatty acid	750

Table 6.2: A variety of alkaloids present in plants

S.No	Type	Alkaloids	Plant family
1.	Aporphine	Boldine	Monimiaceae
2.	Imidazole	Pilocarpine	Rutaceae
3.	Purine	Coffeine	Sterculiaceae
4.	Pyrrol	Hygrine	Erythroxylaceae
5.	Pyridine	Nicotine	Piperaceae
6.	Tropane	Atropine	Solanaceae
7.	Quinoline	Quinine and quinidine	Rubiaceae and Rutaceae
5.	Isoquinoline	Morphine and emetine	Papaveraceae
9.	Indolizidine	Swainsonine	Leguminosae
10.	Indole	Vinblastine and vincrystine	Apocynaceae

Table 6.3 : Important alkaloids of Acacia species (Clement et al., 1998)

S.No	Name of species	Important alkaloids
1.	Acacia angustifolia	Tryptamine
2	Acacia angustissima	β-methyl-phenethylamine,
3.	Acacia acuminata	Tryptamine
4	Acacia adunca	β-methyl-phenethylamine
5	Acacia aroma	Tryptamine
6	Acacia auriculiformis	5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine
7	Acacia catechu	Dimethyltryptamine (DMT)
8	Acacia berlandieri	Amphetamines, mescaline and nicotine
9	Acacia chundra	Dimethyltryptamine (DMT)
10	Acacia complanata	N-methyl-tetrahydroharman , tetrahydroharman
11	Acacia concinna	Nicotine
12	Acacia confusa	Dimethyltryptamine (DMT)
13	Acacia constricta	β-methyl-phenethylamine
14	Acacia greggii	Phenethylamine, N-methyl-β-phenethylamine
15	Acacia harpophylla	Phenethylamine, hordenine
16	Acacia longifolia	Histamine alkaloids
17	Acacia victoriae	5-MeO-alkyltryptamine,Tryptamines
18	Acacia taxensis	β-methyl-phenethylamine
19	Acacia simplex	DMT and NMT
20	Acacia schaffneri	Phenethylamine and Amphetamines
21	Acacia rigidula	Nicotine,amphetamines,tryptamine
22	Acacia colei	Dimethyltryptamine (DMT)
23	Acacia baileyana	Tryptamine and β-carbolines, Tetrahydroharman

There are many methods that have been used for qualitative and quantitative analysis of plant metabolites. The qualitative analysis is generally used to identify a particular photochemical in plants, using a particular method for instance: Shinoda's test for Flavonoids, Mayer's, Dragendorfrs, Hager's and Wagner's reagents for alkaloids, Fehling's solutions for carbohydrates. The quantitative analysis is used to estimate or isolate the total amount of phytochemicals from the dry powder or ashes of subjected plant part (Liu et al., 1993).

Phytochemical studies have been carried out on several plants viz. Beyeria leschenaulth (Baddeley et al., 1964), Artemisia douglasiana (Matsueda and Geissman, 1967), Calendula officinalis (Kasprzyk and Pyrek, 1968), Cactus ( Jolad and Steelink, 1969), Artemisia nova (Irwin and Geissman, 1969), Artemisia ludoviciana (Geissman and Saitoh, 1972), Gymnosporia wallichiana (Kulshreshtha, 1977), Catha cassinoides (Betancor et al., 1980), Acacia dealbata (Imperato, 1982), Tanacetum vulgare (Ognyanov and Todorova, 1983), Salvia pratensis (Anaya et al., 1989), Ajania achilleoides (Zdero et al., 1990),Salacia cordata (Tinto et al., 1992),Phyllanthus flexuosus (Tanaka et al.,1993), Anthems carpatica (Bulatovic et al.,1997), Maria oblongifolia (Abdel-Mogib,1999), Anthemis carpatica (Vajs et al., 2000), Ficus microcarpa (Chiang and Kuo, 2001), Pavetta crassipes (Sanon et al., 2003), Acanthospermum hispidium (Sanon et al., 2003), Acacia mellifera (Mutai et al., 2004), Dtanthus maritimus (Christodoulopoulou et al., 2005), Acanthopanax koreanum (Park et al., 2005),Tragia involucrata( Samy et al., 2006), Boswellia serrata (Sharma et al., 2007).

Related articles

Comments

Know Science And Want To Write?

Donate or Buy SWAG