Phytochemical investigations of salacia macrophylla / Siti Sofiah Abdul Ahmad

Salacia macrophylla belongs to the Celastraceae family. This species comprises about 200 different species which are widely distributed in the world mainly in the tropical areas like India, Sri Lanka, Southern China and other Southeast Asian countries. This plant has been selected for this study as there had been many previous articles which record the medicinal values of the phytoconstitutents from Celastraceous plants. However, there is only one available journal which records the phytochemical investigation of Salacia macrophylla. Thus, the main purpose of this study is to find out the chemical constituents from the roots of Salacia macrophylla. One compound was successfully isolated as a result of this study. Column chromatography method was used to separate the compounds from the ethyl acetate extract of S. macrophylla. Purification and isolation was done by using preparative TLC. Identification of the isolated compound was done using the NMR technique.