UV / HPLC-MS identification of phenolic constituents from Ageratum conyzoides L.

This work presents the Spectro-analytical studies of phenolic constituents from Ageratum conyzoides L. plant. The Phenolic Compounds play an important role in the plants. They serve as defences against different herbivores and microbes. As all the phenolic compounds such as flavonoids, legnines, tannins etc contains at least one aromatic ring with hydroxyl moiety. Keeping in view its importance and structure of the phenolic compounds the present study was carried out to isolate such compounds. Firstly the plant extracts were prepared by standard extraction methods. Then, the separation of the phenolic constituents was done by using simple chromatographic techniques such as fla sh column chromatography (FCC) and preparative thin layer chromatography (PTLC) from each plant extract. The type of sugars present and the presence or absence of flavonoids were confirmed by acid hydrolysis and flavonoid tests. The identification, differentiation and structure elucidation of the pure flavonoids and phenolic acids were achieved by High Performance Liquid Chromatography technique coupled with Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-MS). The results showed that the extracts contain a phenolic acid and flavonoid derivatives. The results clearly revealed that in future one can use the simple chromatographic techniques for the determination of Phenolic compounds from plants.