RP-HPLC-DAD determination and quantification of Quercetin and Luteolin in plant extracts of Merremia aegyptia and Merremia dissecta

Abstract

Medicinal plants produce various useful metabolites such as alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins etc those are widely used for the preparation of various pharmaceutical products, or as food additives. A simple and precise reverse phase high performance liquid chromatographic (RP-HPLC) seperation method has been developed for determination and quantification of the flavonoids, quercetin and luteolin simultaneously, from methanolic extracts of Merremia aegyptia and Merremia dissecta after optimization of extracting solvent and chromatographic conditions through HPLC coupled to a Diode Array Detector(DAD). HPLC analysis estimated contents of the quercetin to be 20 ng/µl in M. aegyptia stem and 13.2 ng/ µl in M. dissecta callus whereas luteolin was found to be 0.4 mg/ml in M. dissecta callus. From the previous published literature, it appears that this is the first report of quantification of these flavonoid compounds as they have not been reported earlier in both the species under study.