Planta Med 2010; 76 - P29
DOI: 10.1055/s-0030-1251791

Quantitative Determination of Gallic Acid, Gallic Acid Methyl Ester and Six Hydrolyzable Tannins from Terminalia bellirica by HPLC-UV

YH Wang 1, B Avula 1, YH Shen 1, TJ Smillie 1, IA Khan 1, 2
  • 1National Center for Natural Products Research, Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, The University of Mississippi, MS 38677, USA
  • 2Department of Pharmacognosy, School of Pharmacy, The University of Mississippi, MS 38677, USA

Terminalia bellirica (Gaertn.) Roxb., also known as beleric and bastard myrobalan, is a large deciduous tree mainly growing in Southeast Asia, and commonly used as herbal raw materials in many Ayurvedic and herbal formulations. The fruits of T. bellirica are either used individually or in combination known as 'Triphala' [1]. Terminalia species are rich source of tannins and dyes. Gallic acid is the basic unit of hydrolyzable tannins.

Six hydrolyzable tannins including corilagin (3), 2,3,6-tri-O-galloyl-β-D-glucose (4), chebulagic acid (5), 1,2,3,6-tetra-O-galloyl-β-D-glucose (6), 1,2,3,4,6-penta-O-galloyl-β-D-glucose (7), chebulinic acid (8), together with gallic acid (1) and gallic acid methyl ester (2) were isolated from fruits of T. bellirica. A developed HPLC-UV method has been successfully employed to the quantitative determination of six hydrolyzable tannins as well as gallic acid and gallic acid methyl ester in T. billirica. The separation was achieved by using C-18 column material in HPLC method coupled with a PDA detector. Mobile phase is composed of water and acetonitrile, both containing 0.1% acetic acid. The column temperature was maintained at 30°C. The method was validated for linearity, repeatability, limits of detection (LOD) and limits of quantification (LOQ). The developed HPLC-UV method has been successfully applied for determination of target analytes in different Terminalia species.

Fig.1: HPLC-UV Chromatograms of standards (A) and extracts of T. bellirica (B) at 275nm

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 5U01FD002071–09 and 1U01FD003871–01, and the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Specific Cooperative Agreement No. 58–6408–2-0009. References: [1] Sharma A, et al. (2009) Asian J Chem 21(9): 7111–7116.