Analysis of five bioactive compounds from naturally occurring Rhodiola rosea in eastern Canada

Abstract

Saunders, D., Poppleton, D., Struchkov, A. and Ireland, R. 2014. Analysis of five bioactive compounds from naturally occurring Rhodiola rosea in eastern Canada. Can. J. Plant Sci. 94: 741–748. The plant Rhodiola rosea produces several bioactive compounds including salidroside, tyrosol, rosarin, rosavin, and rosin. These compounds have been used in traditional medicinal practices in Asia and are currently found in many nutraceutical mixtures. The nutraceutical qualities of these five compounds has resulted in over harvesting of natural populations of R. rosea and instigated several industrial cultivation operations. The purpose of this study was to examine R. rosea from five distinct natural populations in the maritime provinces of Canada to determine the concentrations of these five bioactive compounds. Ten samples were obtained from each of five sites and the concentration of each compound in the rhizomes was determined. Reverse phase-HPLC with a diode array detector was used to quantify the five compounds extracted from plant samples. The concentrations of salidroside were found to be as high as 1.76% of total dry weight, tyrosol 0.28%, rosarin 1.1%, rosavin 2.14%, and rosin 0.31%. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to determine rhizomal concentrations of the five bioactive compounds in natural Canadian samples of R. rosea.