Phytochemical Analysis of Sabah Snake Grass - nutrient supplement in Malaysia Essay

Traditionally, C. nutans is used as herbal tea when the fresh leaves are boiled with water in Malaysia. While in Thailand, is used for externally treatment of skin rashes, snake, herpes simplex virus and insect bite (Aslam, et al., 2015). In China, inflammatory conditions can be treated such as haematoma, contusion, strains and sprains of injuries (Ghasemzadeh, et al., 2014). Due to the health benefits to human, a research on the method to preserve the bioactive compounds was introduced to maintain and increase the shelf life of the content in the plant.
Nowadays, new technology can produce a new product that is more compatible to the consumer. In Malaysia, there are nutrient supplement of Sabah Snake Grass that are in form capsule or tablet. This type of product can give convenient to the consumer as their changes in lifestyle.
C. nutans also used as pharmaceutical intermediates and chemical antecedents for synthetic drugs. Besides, mostly medicines are derived from plant extract. From the extraction, there are several phytochemicals that can be obtained from plant sources such as phenolic, flavonoids, alkaloids, saponins, tanins and lignin.
These bioactive compounds have ability to treat and prevent various health problems such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure. In this study, Isovitexin content will be used to determine the effect of desiccant dehumidified drying by measuring the Isovitexin content before and after drying process.
2.2 Phytochemical Analysis
Phytochemical is a various biologically active compounds found naturally in plants. Function of phytochemicals are as a protection against disease, act as antioxidant, hormonal action, stimulation of enzyme, interference in DNA replication and anti-bacterial effect as well as physical action against pathogens.
Phenolic compound is the third largest group of bioactive phytochemical known as secondary metabolites. Phenolic compound can be categorized into a few classes which are consist of phenolic acids, flavonoids, stilbenes, coumarins , quinones, lignans, curcuminoids and tannins. In this study, phytochemical compound of flavonoid group which is subclass of polyphenol is used to determine the quality of C. nutans when dehumidified air is applied during drying process.
Flavonoids represent the largest and most diverse group, with ~ 6, 000 identified compound (Fong, 2015). These compounds are further subdivided into flavones, flavonols, flavanones, flavanonols, isoflavones, flavan-3-ols, glycosylflavonoids, chalcones, aurones and anthocyanins, according to modifications of the basic skeleton (Fong, 2015).
The flavones C-glycosides are subclass of the flavonoids group of compounds. From the research of ( Lee, et al., 2014), the important of flavonoid group of C. nutans is six C-glycosyl flavone which are Schaftoside,Iisomollupentin 7-O--glucopyranoside, Orientin , Isoorientin , Vitexin , and Isovitexin . C-glycosyl flavone is isolated from the methanolic extract of C. nutans leaves. Each of the compound has their own function and important in biological activities. For example, Isoorientin and Vitexin act as antimicrobial and Isovitexin act as antioxidant.
In this study, Isovitexin will be a bioactive compound to be measured throughout the experiments because of the highest quantity in the C.nutans based on the research of Lee, et al., (2014).