Chemical profile of wild and cultivated Salsola soda aerial parts

The genus Salsola (Amaranthaceae) includes about 120 species of herbaceous or shrubby plants, widespread especially in the brackish grounds of the moderate and subtropical regions of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. Previous phytochemical investigations on this genus reported the isolation of flavonoids, alkaloids, acetophenones, coumarins and sterols. Salsola species are well-known in folk medicine as anti-hypertensive, diuretic, anti-cancer, antioxidant, emollient, purgative, anti-ulcer, and anti-inflammatory remedies [1]. Wild S. soda L. is an erect glabrous annual plant widespread in South Europe, particularly in marginal areas near the coast [2]; the plant buds, called “agretti”, are edible and cultivated as a food plant and in the past also as a source of impure sodium carbonate [1]. To date, in the literature there isn’t any complete phytochemical characterization of the wild and cultivated plants. For this reason, the aim of the present study was to evaluate and compare the chemical content of wild and cultivated S. soda aerial parts. The dried and powdered plant materials were sequentially extracted with n-hexane and MeOH. The MeOH extracts were partitioned between n-BuOH and H2O to remove sugar and other inorganic salt and the n-BuOH fraction was firstly submitted to LC-MS analysis. On the same time, the n-BuOH extract of the wild plant was chromatographed on Sephadex LH-20 column, and then, subsequently, fractioned with CPC and RP-HPLC, to obtain pure compounds. Flavonoids and saponins were finally isolated and characterized by NMR and MS analyses. The chemical profile of both plants exhibited that wild S. soda is richer than the cultivated one in flavonoids and saponins content.