New insight into the flavonoid composition of Chenopodium botrys

Due to their beneficial medicinal effects, in recent years there has been an increasing interest in the research of flavonoids in plant sources. In the conducted research the flavonoid composition of Chenopodium botrys was defined by applying an approach which included different extraction procedures and methods of detection. Primary extraction of polyphenols with two different solvents, HPLC-PDA fingerprint profiling and an Orbitrap UHPLC-MS/MS detection were used. The fingerprint profile of polyphenols showed that the major constituents were the methoxylated flavones nepetin, hispidulin and jaceosidin, while the quercetin glycosides represented a minor part. In order to elucidate their structure, the fragmentation of the compounds was examined by means of ESI-MS/MS analysis. A novel explanation of the fragmentation pathways of the methoxylated flavones was introduced. Nepetin, nobiletin, eupatilin, rutin and quercetin-3-O-galactoside were identified in the polyphenol complex of C. botrys for the first time. (C) 2017 Phytochemical Society of Europe. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.