Abstract:
Munroniapinnata,also known asground neem/king bitter in English, is a valuable medicinal plant that is widely used in Ayurveda in Sri Lanka. It has shown number of medicinal properties like, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and anti-malarial. The objectives of this study were, to obtain calli from different explants of M.pinnata and to identify the chemical identities extracted from these calli. This study was conducted with an aim to confirm the availability of chemical classes produced by the natural plant in its callus stage and to see whether the same chemical classes were extracted from all three explants. In vitro culture of M.pinnata was done using three different explants, leaf discs, petals and immature seeds. The calli obtained were extracted into methanol and water. These three samples were subjected to TLC to identify alkaloids and terpenoids, HPTLC, GC-MS and preliminary phytochemical tests, in order to identify glycosides, tannins, saponins, flavonoids and steroids. The chemical compounds extracted from the samples of leaf and petal calli and the mother plant were identified via the GC-MS study. A HPTLC fingerprint of the methanol extracts of all three samples and that of the mother plant was also obtained.Callus induction rate was highest in both leaf discs and petals. Highest yield of callus was from petals and lowest yield was from immature seeds. The data obtained from TLC depicted that all three calli samples gave two spots each, to show the presence of terpenoids. (Rf values: 0.18, 0.34 for petal and leaf calli samples and 0.20, 0.37 for seed calli sample). The results from the preliminary studies showed that, aqueous extracts of leaf, petal and seed calli samples were positive to flavonoids and aqueous extracts of leaf and seedcalli were positive to tannins. The methanol extracts of petal and seedcalli samples were positive to steroids.
