Phytochemical profiling of Moltkiopsis ciliata using DART-ToF-MS and GC-MS

The environment of Saudi Arabia is particularly rich in plants utilized in folk medicine to cure various diseases. Therefore, the quality assessment of these plants and the study of their primary constituents are crucial for human health. Chromatographic techniques and mass spectrometry are effective methods for separating, profiling, and analyzing natural products. The primary objective of this work is to extract and profile the natural constituents present in the Moltkiopsis ciliata plant and identify their major bioactive compounds. More than 30 compounds were rapidly identified from the fresh parts of the plant-flowers, leaves, roots, and stems-without any prior sample preparation by direct analysis in real-time of flight-mass spectrometry (DART-ToF-MS), highlighting the novelty of this method in profiling the phytochemical composition of the plant. The total extracts of the plant were fractionated according to their polarity by liquid-liquid extraction and analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). In addition, the hexane extracts of flowers, leaves, stems, and roots were analyzed using GC-MS and showed the presence of many volatile constituents, in which more than 60 compounds were successfully identified. Many of the detected compounds highlight the potential biological significance of the plant, such as indolizine, echinatine, heliotrine, vitamin E, campesterol, stigmasterol, γ-sitosterol, and phytol, which are known to have anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antioxidant properties. Whereas the abrine compound was identified in this species for the first time. In a comparison between the two MS techniques used in this work, the results indicate that the proposed methods are complementary and can be used together for the comprehensive screening and regular analysis of bioactive compounds in plants.