Abstract
Annona atemoya is a commercially important fruiting plant belonging to the Annonaceae family. It is widely cultivated in tropical and subtropical continents. It is also known as the custard apple which is a hybrid between two Annonaceae species, those being Annona cherimola and Annona squamosa. This study aimed to investigate the phytochemical constituents and pharmacological activity of various parts of A. atemoya including leaves and fruit’s pulp. The leaves and fruits of A. atemoya were collected in July 2020 from a local farm in Queensland, air dried at room temperature (3 days–1 week) and then ground to a powder. The leaves and pulp were separately extracted with hexane, ethyl acetate and finally ethanol for three days each. The preliminary results of Thin layer chromatography (TLC) and Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments indicated the presence of annonaceous acetogenins for the first time in the leaves and pulp as pink bands after reacting with Kedde reagent. For the leaves, ten compounds were identified, two of them were isolated and the other confirmed via NMR and MS analysis. The ethyl acetate extract of leaf was the richest in an abundance of acetogenins in comparison to the hexane extract. With regards to the fruit’s pulp, the concentration of acetogenins was very low compared to the leaves. Future studies will focus on testing either isolated compounds or crude extracts using various cancer cell lines.
Supplementary Materials
The following are available online at https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/ECMC2022-13444/s1.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, J.R.H.; methodology, B.S.M.A.K.; validation, J.R.H. and J.E.H. formal analysis, B.S.M.A.K.; investigation, B.S.M.A.K.; writing—original draft preparation, B.S.M.A.K.; writing—review and editing, J.R.H. and J.E.H.; supervision, J.R.H. and J.E.H. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement
Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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