The role of planar chromatography in the rapid screening and isolation of bioactive compounds from medicinal plants

Thin-layer chromatography is a convenient complementary method to high-performance Liquid chromatography and hyphenated techniques (such as LC-UV and LC-MS) in the search for new bioactive compounds from medicinal plants. Both chemical and biological screening can be performed by TLC. Bioautography on TLC plates enables natural products with antimicrobial and antioxidant activities to be localized in extracts. In addition to analytical applications, the preparative capacity of planar chromatography can be exploited by using overpressure layer chromatography for the separation of plant constituents.