Abstract

Medicinal plants have had a crucial role in human culture and civilization. Alstonia boonei De Wild is a medicinal plant commonly found in West African and is popularly known as God's tree. The plant parts have been traditionally used for painkiller, antimicrobial, antimalarial and antidiabetic which have also been proved scientifically. Previous studies revealed little information on phytochemcial components of A. boonei. The present work aims at investigating and comparing the chemical components of the leaf, the stem and the root of the plant in order to provide sufficient baseline information for future work and for commercial exploitation. Leaf, stem and root extracts of A. boonei were prepared by maceration using 1:1 EtOAc/MeOH and 100% dichloromethane (DCM) as extraction solvents. Gas chromatography and Mass spectroscopy studies were performed to identify the phytochemical constituent of the plant. The Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis of DCM extract of the leaf revealed ten chemical components with Eugenol as major component (54.58%); DCM extract of the stem showed forty one components with alpha-amyrin (32.25%) while DCM extract of the root revealed twenty components with 1,2-benzenedicarboxylic acid (49.2%) as major component. This study shows that the A. boonei extracts of the leaf, stem-back and root consist of different types of compounds with few compounds common to two of the parts. The most identified compound by GC/MS were Eugenol, benzenedicarboxylic acid and alpha-amyrin

Key words: Phytochemicals, Alstonia boonei, gas chromatography/mass spectroscopic studies.