Studies On Chemical Constituents Of Chickpea

Chickpea, one of species of cicer, belongs to Family Leguminosae, is an annual or perennial herb growing in arid and semi-arid area of the world. The seeds of chickpea is a natural Uighur traditional medicine. It has an efficacy of clean away abnormal body fluid, open body fluid, diuresis. Uighur people employ it to cure bronchitis, mucositis, cholera, constipation, dysentery, dyspepsia, diabetes and so on. Chickpea is recorded in Medicine Stand-Uighur Medicine Branch and Records of Uighur Medicine. Because of its medical and therapeutic value, this paper conducts a thorough and systematical study into the main chemical constituents in chickpea seeds.Chickpea had been pretested systematically by means of tube-test. The results show that the main constituents were flavonoids, anthocyanins, hydroxybenzene, organic acids, saponins, protein, tan, glucides etc. On basis of former step, UV spectrophotometry compared with biochanin A as control was established to determine the content of total isoflavonoids in chickpea. Then the isoflavonoid content of chickpea was determined by this method. Accurate, reliable and stable results can be achieved by this assaying method of total isoflavonoids in chickpea. The result showed the average content of total isoflavonoids in chickpea was 0.29% and 0.64% in germinated seeds. The type of chickpea isofalvonoids was analyzed by HPLC and UV. The results show that there were more than twelve types of isoflavonoids in chickpea.Chickpea seeds from different areas were extracted with Soxhlet apparatus used petroleum ether as solvent. The fatty acids of chickpea was esterified with sulfate acid-methol to produce its derivatives. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method was used to analyze the constituents of the fatty acids. The results showed that five fatty acids were detected in seeds of chickpea, namely palmitic acid, linoleic acid, oleic acid, elaidic acid, 8,11-octadecadienoic acid. The unsaturated fatty acids account for 83.59%, 82.57%, 81.86% respectively. Therefore, the chickpea contains appreciable amount of unsaturated fatty acids which have high value in health care.Chickpea seeds were extracted with ethanol, then the crude extraction was concentrated though decompression to gave a brown cream. The ethanol extraction was solved in water, then the water phrase was extracted with petroleum ether, ethyl acetate and n-butanol in order and concentrated respectively. The petroleum ether extraction was analyzed by GC-MS method and eight compounds were identified from it, they were tetradecanoic acid, pentadecanoic acid, hexadecanoic acid, octadecanoic acid, 9,12-octadecadienoic acid, 7,10-octadecadienoic acid, z,z-8,10-hexadecadien-l-ol, tridecanedial. The ethyl acetate and n-butanol extraction were chromatographed on silica gel column, polyamide column, sephadex LH-20 column and preparing TLC, respectively. Eight compounds were obtained from ethyl acetate extraction and one compound were from n-butanol extraction. The structures of eight compounds were identified by EI-MS, ¹HNMR, ¹³CNMR, HSQC, HMBC, IR and chemical reactions respectively. They wereβ-sitosterol, biochanin A, calycosin, formononetin, genistein, trifolirhizin, ononin and sissotrin.This paper conducts a systematical study into the main chemical constituents of chickpea seeds and provides experimental data for cultivated chickpea as a traditional medicine in clinic.