- 1
- Yeditepe
University, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacognosy and
Phytotherapy, Kayisdagi Cad., Atasehir, 34755 Istanbul, Turkey.
- 2
- Innovation Centre of Faculty of Chemistry Ltd., Studenski trg 12-16, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia.
- 3
- Department of Food Chemistry, National Institute of Chemistry, Hajdrihova 19, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
- 4
- Faculty of Chemistry, University of Belgrade, Studentski trg 12-16, 11158 Belgrade, Serbia.
- 5
- Yeditepe
University, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacognosy and
Phytotherapy, Kayisdagi Cad., Atasehir, 34755 Istanbul, Turkey.
Electronic address: yesilada@yeditepe.edu.tr.
Abstract
Chamomile
tea composed of dried flower heads of Matricaria recutita L.
(Asteraceae) is one of the most popular single ingredient herbal teas.
Tea industries, spice shops or public bazaars are mostly supplied
chamomile as a raw material via cultivation or through nature-picking.
However, one of the drawbacks of nature-picking is adulteration. This
could be either due to false authentication of the plant materials by
ingenuous pickers or intentional/unintentional substitution with other
flowers resembling to chamomile in appearance during harvesting.
Therefore, quality control of raw chamomile materials before marketing
should be carefully considered not only by quantification of apigenin
7-O-glucoside (active marker) but also by fingerprinting of chemical
composition. This work presents both quantification of apigenin
7-O-glucoside and chemical fingerprinting of commercial chamomile tea
products obtained from different food stores and spice shops by a
validated HPTLC method. In addition, HPTLC profiles of investigated
chamomile tea samples were compared with HPLC method stated in the
European Pharmacopoeia and it was found that HPTLC method was superior
to HPLC method in the field of adulteration confirmation. Therefore,
fingerprint profiles performed on the silica gel 60 NH2 F254s
HPTLC plates combined with pattern recognition techniques of these
marketed products were comparatively evaluated with wild and cultivar
chamomile samples and also chamomile-like species from Asteraceae.
Consequently, not chamomile tea bags but crude flowers sold on market
were found to be adulterated with other plant materials.
Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
KEYWORDS:
Apigenin
7-O-glucoside; Chamomile tea products; High performance thin-layer
chromatography (HPTLC); Matricaria recutita L.; Multivariate analysis;
Quality control
