Isolation and Identification of Major Chemical Components Found in the Leaves of Lagerstroemia Indica Plant Grown in the City of Tehran, Iran



Ashnagar A¹ ; Ghanad AR² ; Motakefpour M² Show Affiliations
Source: International Journal of ChemTech Research Published:2013

Abstract

Corosolic acid has attracted much attention for its beneficial health effects, particularly with respect to its potential anti diabetic activity. Multicomponent mixtures are usually difficult to separate in a single chromatographic run. In this research, we tried the combination of column chromatography (LC), thin layer chromatography (TLC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) which is more or less an inexpensive method for the separation of the multicomponent mixture of the extract. Distillation of the ground powdered leaves of the plant in water followed by successive refluxing of the residues in ethanol afforded a crude extract which its spectra and HPLC chromatogram showed that it should be a multicomponent mixture. Refluxing of the ground leaves in methanol showed also two major peaks at tR = 2.433, 85.81%, and tR = 4.017, 8.53%. These two methods showed similar results but obtaining a 100% pure corosolic acid was not materiliazed. The results showed that Lagerstroemia indica plant has much lower corosolic acid than Lagerstroemia speciosa plant reported in literature. Soxhlet extraction in various solvent systems was not a satisfactory method as well.