a b s t r a c t
Spilanthes ciliata (S. ciliata) is a perennial herb of global importance owing to its luscious source of bioac-tive fatty acid derived amides known as N-alkylamides. It finds application in skin creams, mouth gels andtoothpastes.
Despite multifaceted applications, a major limitation associated for its commercial applica-tion is the scarcity of contamination free plant source, fluctuations in active metabolites due to variation inextraction procedures, and lack of rapid qualitative method for alkylamide profiling.
In the current work,attempts were made to
1) optimize conditions for mass propagation of contamination free plants of S. cili-ata by tissue culture using leaf discs as explants,
2) establish an optimum extraction ratio of plant/solvent(w/v) for maximum elution of alkylamides and
3) develop a rapid method for qualitative estimation of alkylamide from in vitro raised plants in comparison with that of the field grown counterpart by using LC-Q-TOF (HRMS).
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first qualitative report on alkylamide profileof micropropagated whole plant of Spilanthes.
The correlation pattern reported in this study may formthe basis for using tissue culture raised plantlets of S. ciliata as potential source of bioactive alkylamideson industrial scale.