A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON CHARACTERISATION OF VARIOUS EXTRACTS OF CARICA PAPAYA LEAVES

Sushmitha H. S., V. Rajesh, Madappa M. B. and *Balasubramanian Sathyamurthy

ABSTRACT

Carica papaya is a tropical and a sub-tropical tree, that is tall and herbaceous with the leaves arranged in a spiral manner around the trunk. The leaves of this tree are huge and palmately lobed. The leaf extracts of Carica papaya have been used in the treatment of various diseases including urinary tract infection, dengue, malaria and many others. Preliminary phytochemical analysis of the dried leaf extract using solvents like water, methanol, ethanol and acetone contained alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenoids, anthocyanins, phenolic acids and saponins. A comparable study of the absorption spectra of the column chromatographed extracts with the solvents was made between the fresh and the dried leaf extracts. The graph between O.D (optical density) values and different wavelengths were plotted to evaluate the peaks obtained. Thin layer chromatography (TLC) was used for the separation of the column chromatographed extracts and was observed under UV trans-illuminator. The leaf extracts showed the presence of alkaloids, Anthocyanins, flavonoids, Phenolic acids, saponins and Terpenoids in various solvents. The column chromatographed methanol and ethanol extracts of the leaves showed the peaks at 410 nm and 570 nm, respectively. This may be due to the presence of bioactive compounds in the leaf extracts.

Keywords: Carica papaya, Column chromatography, TLC, Bioactive compounds.