Discriminating Metabolites of Curcuma caesia and Kaempferia parviflora through 1H-NMR and GC-MS Analysis for Plant Authentication

The current study aimed to characterize the metabolite fingerprints of the rhizomes of Curcuma caesia Roxb.(KH) and Kaempferia parviflora Wall.ex Baker (HH) in the family Zingiberaceae using a combination of 1 H-NMR and GC-MS analyses.There are authentication issues between these two species, wherein both are commonly commercialized as Kunyit Hitam (KH) or Black Turmeric, the local name only for C. caesia.K. parviflora is locally known as Halia Hitam (HH) or Black Ginger.The metabolite profile for each species was analyzed through 1H-NMR data by multivariate data analysis (MVDA) to determine the chemical markers.Orthogonal Partial Least Square-Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA) showed clusters of the two species in which the Variable Importance in Projection (VIP) values of more than 1 yielded eleven and four discriminated metabolites belonging to C. caesia (KH) and K. parviflora (HH) respectively.The hexane extracts of the rhizomes of KH and HH were subjected to GC-MS profiling which resulted in 22 and 24 metabolites, respectively and terpenoids, flavonoids, and alkanes were tentatively identified in KH and HH.This study developed characteristic metabolite fingerprinting profiles for each species which distinguish between the rhizomes unambiguously and provide an authenticity assessment of the available products for the patient's benefit.