Philippine E-Journals

Alkaloids as Chemotaxonomic Marker of Four Selected Species of Eupatorium Weeds

Praxedes Fortuna-rosuman

 

Abstract:

This research investigated on what secondary metabolites are present in the leaves of four Eupatorium weed species: adenophorum, coelestinum, odoratum, and riparium. The phytochemical procedures consisted of preliminary and confrmatory tests for alkaloids, fractionation and isolation of the alkaloid crystals. The infrared spectroscope analyzed the functional groups present in the alkaloid extract from each weed sample. These functional groups serving as chemotaxonomic characters were then utilized to group the weeds into two clusters: E. adenophorum and E. coelestinum belong to one group that contains one kind of alkaloid and E. odoratum and E. riparium to another group having another type of alkaloid.