Phenolic Compounds and Radical Scavenging Activity of Senna tora (L.) Roxb. Herbs Collected from Various Geographical Locations of India

Senna tora (L.) Roxb. syn Cassia tora L., commonly known as sickle pod, is widely distributed in tropical Asian countries. Various parts of the plant are reported for their medicinal values due to the presence of anthraquinones, phenolic compounds, emodin, â-sitosterol and chrysophanol. Asensitive analytical procedure using UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS has been developed and validated for simultaneous quantification of five phenolic compounds in the leaves, stem and root extracts of S. tora, which were also evaluated by the radical scavenging activity for DPPH. The highest scavenging activity (95.3 ± 0.5% at 100 μg/mL) was shown by the methanolic extract of CT-2 leaves collected from Nainital. The developed method was applied to investigate the variation of five phenolic compounds in S. tora samples collected from three geographical locations. The results indicated significant variations in scavenging activity among analyzed samples collected from different locations in India, mainly due to the content of rutin.