Scientists in South Africa say they have found the first evidence of a rare class of phenolics, called ‘flavoalkaloids’, in leaves from the cannabis plant.
Phenolic compounds, especially flavonoids, are well-known and sought after in the pharmaceutical industry because of their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-carcinogenic properties.
Researchers from Stellenbosch University have identified 79 phenolic compounds in three strains of cannabis grown commercially in South Africa, of which 25 were reported in the plant for the first time.
Sixteen of these compounds were tentatively identified as ‘flavoalkaloids’, and were mainly found in the leaves of only one of the strains. The findings are published in the Journal of Chromatography A,
First author, Dr Magriet Muller, an analytical chemist in the LC-MS laboratory of the Central Analytical Facility (CAF) at Stellenbosch University, says the analysis of plant phenolics is challenging due to their low concentration and extreme structural diversity.
“Most plants contain highly complex mixtures of phenolic compounds, and while flavonoids occur widely in the plant kingdom, the flavoalkaloids are very rare in nature,” she explains.
“We know that Cannabis is extremely complex – it contains more than 750 metabolites – but we did not expect such high variation in phenolic profiles between only three strains, nor to detect so many compounds for the first time in the species. Especially the first evidence of flavoalkaloids in Cannabis was very exciting.”
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