TLC fingerprint of phenolics and saponins in commercial extracts of Yucca schidigera Roezl.

ABSTRACT

Yucca schidigera Roezl. (yucca) is one of the major industrial sources of steroid saponins approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as generally recognized as safe. Due to the increasing applications of yucca extracts, there is a need for a simple, low-cost method for the authentication of samples. This paper presents a method to obtain unique fingerprints of commercial products of yucca using a single-thin layer chromatography (TLC) system and two visualization reagents for the detection of phenolics and saponins, as a tool for the preliminary quality assessment of the products.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Fingerprint
• phenolics
• qualitative analysis
• saponins
• TLC
• Yucca schidigera

Acknowledgments

Federico Sastre thanks the Vicerrectoría de Investigación, Escuela de Ingeniería of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile for the PhD grant, and Desert King International for sponsoring his PhD project.