Phytochemical Composition and GC‑MS Fingerprinting of Three Sudanese Medicinal Plants: Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum‑graecum L.), Cinnamon (Cinnamomum sp.) and Carob (Ceratonia siliqua L.)

Background & Aim: Sudan harbours a rich but under-explored flora of medicinal plants.This work provides an integrated phytochemical profile and gas-chromatography mass-spectrometry (GC-MS) fingerprint of fenugreek, cinnamon and carob samples marketed in Wad Medani, Sudan, establishing a baseline for future pharmacological exploitation.Methods: Shade-dried seed (fenugreek), bark (cinnamon) and pod (carob) powders were screened for major secondary-metabolite classes by standard thin-layer chromatography (TLC).Crude ethanolic extracts (50 %, v/v) were subjected to GC-MS (Shimadzu GCMS-QP2010 Ultra, RTX-5MS column, splitless injection, oven 60 280 C at 5-8 C min, He 0.6 mL min).Constituents 1 % peak-area were semi-quantified.Results: TLC revealed tannins and saponins in all three species; alkaloids and flavonoids were exclusive to fenugreek, whereas steroids were detected only in cinnamon.Glycosides were absent.GC-MS resolved 30, 16 and 13 peaks for fenugreek, cinnamon and carob, respectively.Fenugreek was dominated by 9,12-octadecadienoic acid (31.3 %) and n-hexadecanoic acid (8.4 %).Cinnamon chromatograms were characterised by trans-cinnamaldehyde (77.9 %) and trans-cinnamic acid (2.2 %).Carob contained high 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (31.8 %) and 4-O-methyl-mannose (58.6 %).Several minor oxygenated sesquiterpenes and sugars are reported for the first time in Sudanese material.Conclusions: The three taxa exhibit distinct chemotaxonomic signatures coherent with their reported bioactivities.Fenugreek lipids and cinnamon cinnamates justify further purification, whereas carob's furan derivatives merit investigation as functional-food ingredients.The dataset furnishes a chemical benchmark for authentication and quality control of Sudanese botanicals.