Studies On Chemical Constituents Of Amomum Villasum Lour

Chinese medicine Amomum fructus, the fruit of Amomum villasum Lour. (Zingiberaceae) has many functions in TCM clinic such as removing moist and relieving pain, warning spleen and checking diarrhea, administering gas and preventing miscarriage.The air-dried powdered villous amomum fruit (3.66 kg) were extracted with 90% EtOH under room temperature to give a crude extract. After concentration, the residue was suspended in water and then partitioned with petroleum ether, chloroform (CHCl3) and ethyl acetate (EtOAc) successively to afford petroleum ether, CHCl3, EtOAc fractions and aqueous residue. By far, fifteen compounds were isolated from these fractions. The structures of thirteen compounds were elucidated as borneol (1),β-sitosterol (2), borneol acetate (3), vanillic acid (4), protocatechuic acid (5), quercetin (6), isoquercitrin (7),3,3',4,4'-tetrahydroxybiphenyl (8),β-daucosterol (9), (E)-ρ-carboxycinnamic acid (10), (E)-ρ-hydroxycinnamic acid (11), stearic acid (12), amomumnin (13) on the basis of physico-chemical properties and spectral data. Among these compounds, compounds 13 is a new lignin, and compounds 7,8,10,11 were isolated from this plant for the first time.To understand the differences of chemical components among fruits of Amomum villasum Lour growing in various production areas, Yanchuan county. Guangdong province. The volatile oils were extracted with steam distillation. The components were separated and identified by GC-MS method and on the comparison with standard MS spectral data. The relative contents in percentage were calculated by area normalization method. The principal components of volatile oils from fruits of Amomum villasum Lour growing in different areas are similar and high in content and the proportion of each component are different in these volatile oils. Borneol acetate content was the highest in Authentic Amomum villasum growing in the county. It possibly is one of the basic evidence for the famous-region crude drug.