Chemical Composition and Anti-proliferative Activity of Essential Oil from Rhizomes of Micropropagated Curcuma aromatica in Eastern India

Abstract

The family Zingiberaceae have been used from centuries as spice ingredient and as traditional medicine in the Asian regions. Mostly gingers are important natural resources which provide many useful food products, spices, medicines, dyes and perfumes. In the present scenario aromatic medicinal plants are used for their vast compound activities and thereby their essential oil which is beneficial to anticancer activity. Therefore a large number of medicinal plants are well-known for their use in ethnomedicine and play a major role in Indian system of ayurvedic medicine. The present study aims for extraction of rhizome essential oil in micropropagated Curcuma aromatica followed by Gas chromatography-mass spectrometery and its cytotoxicity activity study. In result a total of 7 compounds were identified where ar-tumerone as 36.86 % was found to be the major compound. This was followed by MTT assay method where the essential oil was assessed against human breast cancer cell line (MCF7). To validate the cytotoxicity activity, MCF7 cell line was treated against different concentrations of rhizome essential oils ranging from 6.25-100 μl respectively. The medicinally beneficial compounds present in the oil of micropropagated C. aromatica rhizomes alongwith its cytotoxicity activity confirms it to be used by pharmaceuticals for treatment of various diseases as well as for commercial purposes.

Key words:

• Curcuma aromatica
• essential oil
• GC-MS
• cytotoxicity
• MTT assay