Phytochemical screening of stem bark of valuable medicinal tree of tropical forest-Pterocarpus marsupium (Roxb.)

Abstract

Pterocarpus marsupium has known traditional and ethnobotanical uses since past thousands of years. The present study was carried out to screen the stem bark samples for different phytochemicals using different solvents. Bark samples were collected from different forest divisions of Madhya Pradesh and processed. The powdered samples were subjected to extraction with eight solvents of increasing polarity i.e. distilled water, ethanol, methanol, ethyl acetate, chloroform, benzene, hexane and petroleum ether. These extracts were evaluated for phytochemicals qualitatively as well as quantitively. Results indicated the extraction of phytochemicals better in polar solvents i.e. distilled water, ethanol and methanol. Moreover, the extracts of these solvents were found to contain saponins, tannins, alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenoids, steroids and phenols of pharmacological importance. Quantitative estimation of the totalphenol (%), flavonoids (%) and alkaloids (µg/100g) revealed high range of variation within as well as between the sampling sites. This indicates influence of genotype, environment and GxE interaction on the phytochemicals.