Natural Product Research Formerly Natural Product Letters ISSN: 1478-6419 (Print) 1478-6427 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gnpl20 Reporting effective extraction methodology and chemical characterization of bioactive components of under explored Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco from semi-arid climate Rafia Rehman, Muhammad Asif Hanif, Muhammad Zahid & Rashid Waseem Khan Qadri To cite this article: Rafia Rehman, Muhammad Asif Hanif, Muhammad Zahid & Rashid Waseem Khan Qadri (2018): Reporting effective extraction methodology and chemical characterization of bioactive components of under explored Platycladus�orientalis (L.) Franco from semi-arid climate, Natural Product Research, DOI: 10.1080/14786419.2018.1519707 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14786419.2018.1519707 View supplementary material Published online: 03 Nov 2018. Submit your article to this journal View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gnpl20 NATURAL PRODUCT RESEARCH https://doi.org/10.1080/14786419.2018.1519707 SHORT COMMUNICATION Reporting effective extraction methodology and chemical characterization of bioactive components of under explored Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco from semi-arid climate Rafia Rehmana, Muhammad Asif Hanifa, Muhammad Zahida and Rashid Waseem Khan Qadrib a Department of Chemistry, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan; bInstitute of Horticultural Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY The bioactive ingredients of many essential oils are complex and difficult to reproduce synthetically. In the present study, the influence of extraction method on relative extraction of bioactive compounds of essential oil of Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco (Thuja orientalis L. is a synonym of it) leaves gathered from semiarid climate was studied. A higher yield of essential oil was obtained by hydrodistillation (0.1%) as compared to steam distillation (0.07%) under newly optimized conditions. Initial analysis of these oils by TLC showed the presence of different polarity groups ranging from non-polar terpene hydrocarbons to polar terpenoid alcohols. GC-MS analysis revealed that major component of hydrodistilled essential oil of Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco leaves was a-pinene (17.83%) and steam distilled essential oil contained a-cedrol (12.44%). The results obtained in the present study emphasize that suitable extraction technique should be used to obtain particular component of interest. Received 24 May 2018 Accepted 1 September 2018 CONTACT Muhammad Asif Hanif drmuhammadasifhanif@gmail.com Agriculture, Faisalabad 38040, Pakistan Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here. ß 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group KEYWORDS Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco; essential oil; steam distillation; hydrodistillation; a-pinene; a-cedrol; diterpenoid; triterpenoid Department of Chemistry, University of 2 R. REHMAN ET AL. 1. Introduction Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco (family Cupressaceae) is a marvelous, multipurpose, evergreen plant which has been used anciently for its medicinal importance and association with long life and vitality in Buddhist throughout in China (Kshirsagar et al. 2017). Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco also has diverse pharmacological activities and therapeutic uses. The leaves and seeds of P. orientalis are used as a traditional remedies in some eastern Asian countries. In Chinese herbal medicine, this species is used as a cough remedy, expectorant, and hemostatic (Asghari et al. 2007) while Korean folk medicinal system has been utilizing dried leaves of this plant not only as a hemostatic and expectorant but also as a hypotensor. The leaves of P. orientalis contain essential oils and are used to cure microbial infections, inflammation, cancer, moles and parasitic worms (Jasuja et al. 2015). To best of our knowledge, there is no report available on chemical composition of Platycladus orientalis leaves essential oil, collected from Pakistan and extracted by steam distillation and hydrodistillation. So, the aim of this work was to accomplish these goals. 2. Results and discussion 2.1. Essential oil yield In current investigation, the hydrodistillation of the leaves of Platycladus orintalis produced dark yellow oil with 0.1 ± 0.03% yield (v/w %) whereas steam distillation gave 0.07 ± 0.05 (v/w %) yellow oil. It has been established by numerous previous investigations on different plants that essential oil yield is strongly effected by a number of factors including isolation methods, genotype of the plant, environmental conditions, time of harvesting, process of dehydration and storage of plant material (Rehman et al. 2016). 2.2. Influence of extraction method on yield The influence of extraction method on yield and chemical composition of essential oil was prominent in the current study. The condensation flow rate (mL.min 1) was found to be 0.05 mL.min 1 and 0.03 mL.min 1 for hydrodistillation and steam distillation, respectively. This results in a higher yield for hydrodistilled essential oil of Platycladus orintalis leaves as compared to steam distillation. This can be explained by the fact that the isolation of essential oil form plant material occurs via two simultaneous mechanisms: a) the diffusion of essential oil from the interior of the plant particles towards their external surfaces and b) “washing” of the essential oil from the external surfaces of the plant particles. Each process has a different rate constant but the diffusional process is much slower than the washing and is a rate limiting step (Milojevic et al. 2013). 2.3. TLC analysis A careful comparative analysis of TLC plates developed for hydrodistilled and steam distilled essential oils showed that steam distilled essential oil of Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco leaves produced more quenching zones and more colored spots in UV light NATURAL PRODUCT RESEARCH 3 (254 nm) and with VS spray reagent as compared to hydrodistilled oil. These observations lead to the conclusion that steam distilled essential oil may has more chemical components than hydrodistilled oil. 2.4. GC-MS analysis The hydrodistilled essential oil was consist of 28 components and major components were a-pinene (17.83%), D-3-carene (12.52%) and a-cedrol (10.73%) (Table S1 provided Figure 1. %age of components similar in Hydro- and steam distilled essential oil. 80.00 70.00 60.00 Hydrodistilled essential oil 60.59 Steam distilled essential oil % 50.00 40.00 39.92 30.00 20.00 24.71 22.68 22.33 12.85 10.96 10.00 2.45 0.00 Monoterpene hydrocarbon Oxygenated monoterpene Sesquiterpene hydrocarbon Oxygenated Sesquiterpene 0.94 diterpenoids 0.39 triterpenenes Figure 2. %age comparison of different chemical classes of Hydrodistilled and Steam distilled essential oil. 4 R. REHMAN ET AL. Figure 3. Major components of each terpene group of Hydro- and steam distilled essential oil. in supplementary material). These results are in accordance with those reported previously for hydrodistilled essential oil of Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco (Dai et al. 2013). This hydrodistilled essential oil can serve as a source of a-pinene which have a great application not only in flavor and fragrance industry but also in medicinal industry. In case of steam distilled essential oil, a-cedrol (12.44%), a-humulene (10.71%) and b-caryophyllene oxide (7.22%) were found to be major components and a total of 37 components were detected. Hui et al. (2006) also reported similar results for steam distillated essential oil of Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco leaf twigs with a-cedrol (39. 06%) as a main component (Hui et al. 2006). a-cedrol is an active component with anti-obesity, anti-hyperlipidemia, and antidiabetic effects (Chakraborty et al. 2017). Some common components were found to be present in different concentrations in both of these oils (Figure 1). Limonene, terpinolene, a-humulene and a-cedrol were present merely in comparable proportions in both hydro- and steam distilled oils. Components like (þ)-camphene, a-phellandrene, thujopsene, germacrene D, a-selinene, a-muurolene and s-muurolol were only present in hydrodistilled essential oil. NATURAL PRODUCT RESEARCH 5 Whereas only steam distilled essential oil showed the presence of diterpenes (C20) and triterpenes (C30) with a concentration of 0.94% and 0.39%, respectively. The comparison of different chemical classes of hydro- and steam distilled essential were quite different (Figure 2). Major monoterpene hydrocarbons present in hydrodistilled essential oil were a-pinene (an anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and antioxidant terpenoid and largely used in perfume industry) (Silva et al. 2012; Mogoşanu et al. 2017) and D-3-carene as compared to D-3-carene and limonene which were major components of steam distilled essential oil (Figure 3). In case of oxygenated monoterpenoids, only esters (bornyl acetate and a-terpinyl acetate) were present in both types of essential oils with a little high percentage in steam distilled essential oil. The sesquiterpene hydrocarbons group have b-caryophyllene and a-humulene as main components of hydrodistilled essential oil while a-humulene and cedrene were major components of steam distilled essential oil. a-cedrol, a members of the oxygenated sesquiterpenes group, is a bioactive sesquiterpenoid alcohol (Chouhan et al. 2017) and was present in good amounts in both types of essential oils. Steam distilled essential oil also has a considerable proportion of b-caryophyllene oxide in it. From the results obtained, it found that the essential oil extraction method completely changes chemistry of essential oil components. Similar, observations were also recorded in a previous study (M ekaoui et al. 2016). It can also be concluded that to study the chemical composition of essential oil of a particular plant both distillation methods should be considered. 3. Conclusion The current study revealed that hydro- and steam distillation methods not only have a significant effect on yield but also on the composition of essential oil. GC-MS analysis showed that steam distilled essential oil has more chemical constituents with bioactive a-cedrol as a major component, as compared to hydrodistillation where medicinally important a-pinene was the major one. The detailed comparative analysis of different chemical classes of terpenoids showed that the composition of essential oils of the plant, by different extraction conditions changes. The results obtained highlighted the importance of TLC method as an effective and inexpensive technique for preliminary essential oils analysis. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. 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