Planta Med 2011; 77 - P_70
DOI: 10.1055/s-0031-1273599

Method Development and Analysis of Anthocyanins from Acai (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) Berries and Dietary Supplements using HPTLC

CS Rumalla 1, B Avula 1, YH Wang 1, TJ Smillie 1, IA Khan 1, 2, 3
  • 1National Center for Natural Products Research, Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Mississippi, MS 38677, USA
  • 2Department of Pharmacognosy, School of Pharmacy, The University of Mississippi, MS 38677, USA
  • 3Department of Pharmacognosy, College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Acai (Euterpe oleracea Mart., family Arecaceae) is a source for natural antioxidants and is a native to the Northern parts of Brazil, specifically from the Amazonian region, and it is considered as energetic fruit. Acai berries are known to contain anthocyanins that are responsible for their violet color [1]. A rapid HPTLC method was developed for the analysis of the major constituents, cyanidin-3-O-glucoside (1) and cyanidin-3-O-rutinoside (2) from fruits of Euterpe oleracea Mart. and dietary supplements claiming to containing acai. The developed method was validated for all the parameters tested and successfully applied to the identification of anthocyanins in plant samples and dietary supplements. The separation of these compounds was carried out on silica gel 60F254 elution with EtOAc: Formic acid: Acetic acid: H2O (10:1.1:1.1:2.6 v/v/v/v). Evaluation of the HPTLC plates was performed using CAMAG TLC scanner 3 with winCATS software. The samples were identified by matching the color, and Rf values of the bands with those of the standard compounds. Track-1: (Fig.1), authenticated acai sample; track 2–3: commercial acai samples; Track-4: standard mixture of two compounds; track-5: cyanidin-3-O-rutinoside; track-6: cyanidin-3-O-glucoside; track 7–10: dietary supplements claiming to contain acai. Tracks-7,8 &10 showed the presence of anthocyanins and track 9 did not. The developed method gave a good separation of two anthocyanins and was found to be simple and sensitive with good precision and reproducibility. Figure 2 shows the densitogram of a plant sample and standard compounds at 550nm.

Fig.1: HPTLC Image track-1–3: berries of Acai; Track-4: standard mix-2; track-5: cyanidin-3-O-rutinoside; track-6: cyanidin-3-O-glucoside; track 7–10: dietary supplement under white light.

Fig.2: Densitogram chromatogram of track-1–10at 550nm

Acknowledgements: This research is supported in part by „Science Based Authentication of Dietary Supplements“ and „Botanical Dietary Supplement Research“ funded by the Food and Drug Administration grant numbers 5U01FD002071–10 and 1U01FD003871–02, and the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Specific Cooperative Agreement No. 58–6408–2-0009 and the authors would like to thank Annette Ford for the extractions of plant samples.

References: [1] de Rosso V, et al. (2008)J Food Comp and Anal, 21(4): 291–299.