Quantitative determination of Ferulic Acid in Ricinus communis Linn. Leavesand its Geographical Variation using HPTLC Fingerprint

Simple, economical and conventional extraction of Ricinus communis Linn. leaves and quantitative determination of ferulic acid have been carried out by High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography. Geographical variations are found in TLC fingerprints of the leaves analyzed through HPTLC techniques. Resolutions of bands as well as number of bands are found better in the plant collected from Delhi location than the other locations. Ethanolic extract of the leaves was used for the analysis and HPTLC experiments were performed on pre-coated silica gel 60 F254 aluminum sheets. For achieving good separation, mobile phase consisting of chloroform: methanol (95:5, v/v) was used. The densitometric determination of ferulic acid was carried out at 366 nm in remission/fluorescence mode. Method was validated in term of linearity, accuracy and precision. The calibration curve was linear in the range of 0.3 to 0.9 μg of ferulic acid, regression equation (Y=11.41+0.7283*X ±0.82) revealed a linear relationship (r = 0.9997) between the mass of ferulic acid applied and the peak areas. The limit of detection and limit of quantitation were found 3.72 ng and 11.26 ng, respectively. Leaves collected from Delhi location showed better yield of ferulic acid content (2.87 μg/g leaves) while leaves collected from Guwahati and Jhansi showed lower yield of ferulic acid content 1.15 μg/g and 0.24 μg/g, respectively than Delhi location. This study will be useful for rapid quantitative determination of bioactive ferulic acid in R. communis Linn. containing formulations for purpose of QA and QC and to help in selection of location for collection of plant material for manufacturers to prepare high quality formulations