Solvent based phytochemical landscape of Boerhavia diffusa L. roots using LC–MS and greenness assessment tools

Boerhavia diffusa L. is a medicinal plant loaded with uncountable numbers of phytocompounds possessing several therapeutic activities. Phytochemicals are generally used for drug preparation by extracting them from plants in a solvent. Every solvent has a different ability to extract the phytochemicals. The selection of solvent for extraction is crucial because the choice of a particular solvent may not be able to bring out the phytochemicals of desired therapeutic activities. The present study is carried out to investigate the phytochemical profiles of extracts of B. diffusa roots in different solvents. Organic solvents of various polarities and water were used to extract the roots of B. diffusa . Extracts obtained were subjected to liquid chromatography-tandem Mass Spectrometry for qualitative identifications of metabolites. The analytical technique adopted was evaluated through different greenness tools like AGREE, AGREEprep and BAGI. Each solvent differently extracts the phytochemical and generates a unique profile. Among the tested solvents methanol was found to be the best-extracting media, it possesses the highest number (17) of phytocompounds followed by ethanol (16), chloroform (15) and hexane was proven to be the weakest (4) among all the solvents. Water was proven to be a good extracting media possessing 14 phytochemicals and best sustainable option scoring 0.80 through greenness analysis which is best among the all solvents used. The study embarks us to the conclusion that none of the solvents alone can extract all the phytochemicals present in the plant. The results can significantly contribute by paving the path to the development of phyto-pharmaceuticals.