Phytochemical and b iological investigation of vitex peduncularis wall

Abstract

Verbenaceae plants such as Vitex peduncularis is enriched with important biologically active compounds. From the profound interest of these compounds and their useful biological activities, the bark of this plant was extracted with methanol. Then the methanol extract was partitioned with n-hexane, dichloromethane, ethyl acetate and 1-butanol respectively. The dichloromethane and ethyl acetate fractions were subjected to various chromatographic techniques to isolate the pure compounds for characterization and determination of their structures. Four compounds were purified and the structures were determined. Among them, the compound-1 to compound-3 was isolated from the dichloromethane part and compound-4 was isolated from the ethyl acetate part. --------------------------- The ethyl acetate part of methanol extract was found to have high antioxidant activity whereas, the n-hexane part of methanol extract showed low antioxidant activity.

Thus the isolation, characterization and investigation of potent antioxidant activity of the crude extracts might generate much synthetic and biological interest in this class of the natural products.