QUALITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE PHYTOCHEMICAL SCREENING OF ACANTHOSPERMUM HISPIDUM D.C. ROOT EXTRACTS

Abstract

Phytochemicals have great potency as therapeutic agents. There is continuous and urgent need to discover new
therapeutic compounds with diverse chemical structures and novel mechanism of action because there has been an
alarming increase in the incidence of new and re-emerging infectious diseases. Hence, the present investigation was
carried out to assess the phytoconstituents of various root extracts of Acanthospermum hispidum. The extracts were
subjected to qualitative and quantitative phytochemical analyses as per standard procedures. The results showed that
steroids were detected in maximum number of solvent extracts (five among six solvent extracts analysed) followed by
alkaloids (in four solvent extracts). Flavonoids, glycosides, phenols, saponins and tannins were absent in all the six
solvents used for qualitative phytochemical analyses. Maximum number (five) of compounds were identified in methanol
and least (one) in hexane root extract of Acanthospermum. Findings of quantitative analyses highlighted that maximum
content of alkaloids (4.54 mg/g) were determined in aqueous extract, flavonoids (0.93 mg/g) in methanol, phenols
(1.50 mg GAE/g) in aqueous, tannins (0.84 mg TAE/g) in methanol and terpenoids (3.66 %) in methanol extracts. The
result of this study is encouraging further clinical studies to determine the potential effectiveness of particular
phytochemical in vivo.