A Comparison of Microwave Assisted Medicinal Plant Extractions for Detection of Their Phytocompounds Through Qualitative Phytochemical and FTIR Analyses

Abstract

The present study describes an efficient microwave assisted extraction (MAE) method for taking out of secondary metabolites from six important medicinal plants namely Centella asiatica (L.) Urban, Solanum trilobatum (L.), Ocimum sanctum (L.), Eclipta alba (L.) Hassk., Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers. and Justicia adhatoda (L.) Nees. After MAE using water and methanol solvents under microwave irradiation, the extracts were centrifuged and their supernatants were dried. The dried powder samples were subjected to qualitative phytochemical screening and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analyses. The phytochemical screening of both the extracts revealed the presence of proteins, carbohydrates, tannins, flavonoids, terpenoids, alkaloids, phenols, glycosides, and reducing sugar. FTIR analysis confirmed the presence of various functional groups of secondary metabolites available in these medicinal plants such as chloroalkanes, vinyl group, bromoalkanes, aromatic group, alkyl halides, alkyne, polysaccharides, alcohols, amine, carboxylic acids, sulfonyl group, nitrocompounds, amino acids, alkenes, dienes, amine, alkyl group and secondary amines. The occurrence of different phytocompounds and their functional groups were found to be in similar fashion in both aqueous and methanolic extracts of all the six medicinal plants. The present results confirmed the efficiency of MAE for extraction of phytocompounds.