GC-MS Analysis of Mussaenda roxburghii Hk . f . . : A Folk Food Plant Used Among Tribes Of Arunachal Pradesh , India

Introduction: Mussaenda roxhburgii Hk.f. shoot is widely used as folk food among the tribal people of Arunachal Pradesh. This study was carried out to establish the phytoconstituents of Mussaenda roxburghii shoot. Methods: Fresh shoot were collected from Mone forest of East Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh and identified by the corresponding author himself. The samples were shade dried and pulverized to powder using a mechanical grinder. 500 g powder of the sample was soaked in ethanol for 72 hours with intermittent shaking then filtered through Whatmann No. 41 filter paper and concentrated under reduced pressure at 40°C by using rotary evaporator to obtain a viscous semi solid extract. Gas-Chromatography Mass Specrometry (GC-MS) analysis of the ethanol extracts was carried out in Shimadzu GCMS-QP-2010 plus system. The identification of compounds was performed by comparing their mass spectra with data from NIST 11 (National Institute of Standards and Technology, US) and WILEY 8. Results: The GCMS chromatogram of Mussaenda roxburghii shoot ethanolic extract gave forty nine phytochemical compounds. The most prevailing compounds were hydrocoumarin with 13.6%, hexadeconoic acid, 2-hexadecen-1-ol, 3, 7, 11, 15 tetramethyl [R-[R-) with 17.52%, ethyl ester with 6.24% and Vitamin E with 2.8%. The study gave some compounds with biological interest like gamma tocopherol, Vitamin E, Neophytadiene, Squalene etc. which have been reported to be Antitumur, Antiinflammatory, Antiaging, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, Antipyretic, perfume, pesticide and sunscreen.


INTRODUCTION
Food without dal, wheat, potato, oil and spice is the main characteristic features of the indigenous food system ofArunachal Pradesh and it is an interesting researchable domain. 1 They use locally available wild and semi domesticated herbs in their diet for food and medicines since antiquity.Let food be your medicine, once said Hippocrates (c.460-c.370 BC) over 2500 years ago. 2,3In the word of Etkin and Ross 4 and Guarrera and Savo; 2 wild plants retained in local food cultures are inseparable from traditional therapeutic systems hence, there is no clear dividing line between food and medicinal plants especially in indigenous and local traditions.Therefore, Food and medicine represents a continuum domain.Nature has endowedArunachal Pradesh with full of bioresources.Mussaenda roxburgii Hk.f. 5 is one among hundreds of bioresources used among tribal people of Arunachal Pradesh as food.This wild herb is consumed as a vegetable almost every day.Indigenous people of this far remote Indian state prefer to cook this folk food by boiling with rice powder and dry bamboo shoot.Plant kingdom basically produced two types of compounds; plants nutrients to function directly for primary metabolic processes to regulate growth development and reproduction and allele-chemicals or plant secondary compounds as plant chemical defences. 6Plants provide a great challenge in metabolomics due to the rich chemical diversity of metabolites that they possess across a huge range of concentrations; estimates of 100000-200000 metabolites have been made for the plant kingdom. 7nd Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) is a hyphenated analytical technique that combines the separation properties of gasliquid chromatography with the detection feature of mass spectrometry to identify different substances within a test sample 8 likewise, Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is the most commonly used technique for the analysis of liposoluble constituents, especially volatile/ semi-volatile compounds, and their metabolites in biological fluids due to its high resolution, selectivity and sensitivity. 91][12] Hence, the present study has been taken up to study phytocompounds present in the folk food plant used in Arunachal Pradesh by using GCMS.

Plant material
Mussaenda roxburghii Hk.f. an erect shrub; stem light brown, leaves elliptic, entire, acuminate, membranous, pale beneath, lateral nerve 8-10 on either half, petiole stought, stipule lenciolate, flower orange, in dense corym cyme, calyx teeth long, persistant, berry oblong crowded in head like mass. 5 This herb is commonly found in all the 19 districts of Arunachal Pradesh.The materials for this study was collected from Mone forest of East Siang district, Arunachal Pradesh and identified by the corresponding author himself.

Preparation of extract
The shoot of Mussaenda roxburghii Hk.f. which is consumed as food was collected wild from Mone forest of East Siang District, Arunachal Pradesh.The sample was shade dried and pulverized to powder using a mechanical grinder.500 g of plant powder of the sample was soaked in ethanol for 72 hrs with intermittent shaking then filtered through Whatmann No. 41 filter paper and concentrated under reduced pressure at 40°C using rotary evaporator to obtain a viscous semi solid mass/extract.

GC-MS Analysis
Gas-Chromatography Mass Specrometry (GC-MS) analysis of the ethanol extracts of Mussaenda macrophylla was carried out in Shimadzu GCMS-

Identification of phytocomposition
The identification of compounds was performed by comparing their mass spectra with data from NIST 11 (National Institute of Standards and Technology, US) and WILEY 8.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The GCMS chromatogram of Mussaenda roxburghii Hk.f.ethanolic extract (Figure 1) shows 49 peaks indicating the presence of at least forty nine phytochemical constituents.On comparison of the mass spectra of the constituents with the NIST 11 library and Willet 8 library, the forty nine phytocompounds were characterized and identified (Table 1).Some fragmentation patterns of compounds have been given (Figure 2, 3, 4).

CONCLUSON
The GC-MS study of the ethanolic exract of the shoot of Mussaenda roxburghii shoot shows the presence of numbers of useful phytocompounds that are useful for numbers of health problems like cancer, inflammatory, diabetic, antioxidant and antibacterial etc.There should be further scientific studies on this food plant in future.
was 0.3 μl; pressure 85.4kPa, total flow 76.8 mL/min, column flow 1.21 mL/min, linear velocity 40.5 cm/sec, purge flow 3.0 mL/min, split ratio: 60.0; ion source temperature 230°C; scan mass range of m/z 40-600 and interface line temperature 280°C.The identification of compounds was performed by comparing their mass spectra with data from NIST 11 (National Institute of Standards and Technology, US) and WILEY 8.