Analysis of herbal extracts

[Lya]

Dear all,

Is here anyone who make herbal extract analysis by chromatographic methods. Can tell me please what is the best and proper chromatographic method and the equipment with the best results.

Thank you!
Lya

[sassman]

What herbal extract are you analyzing, and what compounds do you want to quantify? Your need to be more specific about what you want to accomplish.

[Lya]

Thank you for your kindness. I want to analysis hydroalcoholic herbal extract or with other solvents for herbal extract (eq. butylene glycol, methanol). The herbs are varied for exemple: mint, rose, marigold, camomile, etc. I want to use these methods for standardization.

Thank you.

[Javier Bueno]

I think that Agilent has just publisher a CD about Chinesse Extracts and methods of Analysis

http://www.chem.agilent.com/Scripts/IDS.asp?lPage=59045

Compendium of HPLC applications for traditional Chinese medicine and chemical drugs in China Pharmacopeia.

[Lya]

Thank you for your suggestion. I will look for it.

[sassman]

Herbs are standardized by quantifying a compound that is characteristic of that particular herb, and then adding a concentrated extract of the herb with known concentration to obtain the desired amount of the characteristic compound.

[Euro08Soccer]

Looking for plant constituents is a very large field of work. For example if you look into the volatiles of typical plants by GC-MS you will find hundreds of species.
You can assess the quality of the plant, it's origin or processing effects such as storage, drying or extraction.
If you are going for non volatile substances, usually the equipment of your lab is the only limit. If you have the possibility of purchasing new things you can chose from a broad range of tchniques. Simple ones would be LC-DAD, more complex and more expensive would be LC-MS.
For quant purposes you would go for a triple quad, doing target analysis. More suited for identification are techniques like LC - TOF, LC-Ion-Trap, LC-Quad-TOF, LC + the Orbitrap system or LC-Trap + TOF.
If you want to go for proteins, Maldi-TOF is the answer. Information is usually found on manufacturer's homepages (Google for Agilent, Bruker, Shimadzu, Thermo, Waters, Varian)
The neatest thing for quant is synthesizing your compounds of interest with a defined isotope marker.