LC–MS/MS-Based Putative Metabolite Profiling of the Stem Ethanol Extract of Bauhinia tomentosa L.

Abstract

Bauhinia tomentosa L. is a medicinally important member of Fabaceae with a documented history of phytochemical investigation. The present study profiled the ethanol extract of B. tomentosa stem by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) using electrospray ionization in positive and negative modes and NIST23 spectral-library matching. Dried powdered stem was extracted by Soxhlet extraction and analyzed on a triple-quadrupole/QTRAP platform coupled to reversed-phase C18 chromatography. The analytical reports contained 22 positive-mode and 28 negative-mode component annotations (50 total). Positive-mode library scores ranged from 25.6 to 100.0, while negative-mode scores ranged from 32.7 to 100.0. The profiles included flavonoids/flavan-3-ols, phenolic acids, coumarins, fatty acids, organic acids, anthraquinone-related compounds and terpenoid/volatile-type annotations. The study provides a stem-specific chemical fingerprint and identifies candidates for future targeted confirmation, isolation, quantitative analysis and comparative phytochemical investigation.