Effect of different extraction solvents to the chemical profiles of Ziziphus mauritiana leaves extract

Abstract

Ziziphus Mauritiana or known as Bidara in Malaysia is one of the medicinal plants that recognized for their nutritional values. However, the research study and knowledge on the benefit of Ziziphus Mauritiana leaves are still inadequate and this plant was categorized in underutilized plant in Malaysia. The current study has been aimed to investigate the effect of different extraction solvent used to percentage yield of the extract as well as the chemical profiles of Ziziphus mauritiana leaves extract. The extraction was carried out using a Soxhlet extraction technique, and the impact of varies extraction solvents (methanol, ethanol and acetone) with a sample-to-solvent ratio of 1:20 were studied. Based on the finding, ethanolic extract has the highest percentage yield which is 21.57% compared to methanol (17.69%) and acetone (3.49%). An advanced high resolution method which is Liquid Chromatography Quadrupole Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (LC-QTOFMS) was implemented to explore the chemical profiles of these extracts such as alkaloids, phenolic, flavonoid and tannins. Based on the analysis, methanolic extract successfully obtained the highest number of constituents compared to other extraction solvents which 58 alkaloids, 49 phenolic and 18 flavonoid compounds. In ethanolic extract, 28 alkaloids, 20 phenolics and 15 flavonoid compounds were detected by this method. Meanwhile, acetone extract revealed the lowest identified compounds which are 18 alkaloids, 4 phenolic and 1 flavonoid. These results showed that more than 100 compounds were detected in all extracts and each extract revealed different number of bioactive compounds present. In fact, the chemical profiling showed significant difference of phytochemical compounds that presence in polar extract (methanolic and ethanolic) compared to acetone extract. It depicted that the polarity of the solvent used is the main parameter to successfully extract the highest amount of compounds in the extract. Therefore, this study highlighted the potential of polar solvent to be used thus leads to the potential of Ziziphus mauritiana leaves extract as a medicinal plant due to many new active compounds present