Chemoprofiling and Solamargine Estimation from a Few Solanum Species Used as ‘Brihati’ and Its Market Samples Using a Validated High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography Method

Summary An ingredient of ‘Dasamoola’ and ‘Laghupanchamoola’ group of drugs, the source of ‘Brihati’ has been controversial. Although the dried root of Solanum anguivi is considered as the source of the drug ‘Brihati’ according to the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India, closely related and morphologically similar few species like Solanum torvum, Solanum melongena, Solanum incanum , and Solanum insanum are known as its substitutes. In the present study, a high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) method was developed and validated for the chemoprofiling and quantitative estimation of glycoalkaloid solamargine from 5 species of the genus Solanum as well as market samples. The developed method was precise, accurate, robust, specific, and linear. The results showed that S. incanum has the highest content of solamargine, followed by S. insanum . Out of the 9 market samples analyzed, solamargine was detected only in 3 samples. Unsupervised pattern recognition techniques, such as principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis, were used to analyze the complex fingerprint patterns and to predict the grouping of samples. The method clearly segregated the field and market samples. Our study is the first attempt to evaluate the drug ‘Brihati’ and the market samples using HPTLC.