Metabolite profiles of Labisia pumila and the discriminative analysis of the varieties using 1 H NMR-based metabolomics approach.

Medicinal plants and herbs have natural variation. The metabolite profile, and hence the biological properties of plant samples of different species, varieties, geographical origin localities or agronomic conditions, may vary quite significantly. Thus, the identification of crude herbs is crucial in order to ensure authenticity, quality, safety and efficacy of the raw material before it is converted to the final products. The chemical analysis techniques which should be unbiased, rapid, and reproducible, while requiring only simple sample preparation. Metabolomics is a comprehensive analysis of metabolites in biological samples using a combination of spectral platforms (e.g, NMR and mass spectroscopy) and multivariate statistical analysis. The approach has received a lot of attention due to its holistic nature and the information-rich results that can be obtained from it. In this paper, an NMR-based metabolomics approach was used to differentiate between three varieties of the medicinal plant Labisia pumila i.e L. pumila var alata, L. pumila var pumila and L. pumila var lanceolata. The medicinal herb is one of five herbs which have been prioritized as and Entry Point Project under the Agriculture NKEA (New Key Economic Area) program for Malaysia. The medicine plant is traditionally used to induce or facilitate labour and treat flatulence, dysentery, dysmenorrhoea, gonorrhoea, and bone sickness. L. pumila exerts an uterotrophic effect and regulates body weight gain by modulating secretion of leptin and resistin, and expression of the adipokines in adipose tissues. For mass cultivation of the plant, all three varieties were promoted. LCMS metabolite profiling of the varieties and NMR-based metabolomics discriminative analysis of the three varieties revealed that L. pumila var alata is differentiated from the other two varieties based on the presence of dexyloprimulanin. This paper will discuss the details of the analysis.