Caucasian Dragonheads: Phenolic Compounds, Polysaccharides, and Bioactivity of Dracocephalum austriacum and Dracocephalum botryoides

Abstract

Dracocephalum botryoides Steven and Dracocephalum austriacum L. are unexplored species of the Dracocephalum genus (Lamiaceae family) with a distribution in the Caucasus, where they are used in folk medicine and local cuisine. There are no data on the chemical composition of these Dracocephalum species. In this study, the application of a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry technique for the metabolite profiling of methanol extracts from herbs and roots of D. austriacum and D. botryoides resulted in the identification of 50 compounds, including benzoic acid derivatives, phenylpropanoids, flavonoids and lignans. Water-soluble polysaccharides of the herbs and roots of D. austriacum and D. botryoides were isolated and characterized as mostly pectins with additive arabinogalactan-protein complexes and starch-like compounds. The antioxidant potential of the studied extracts of Dracocephalum and selected phenolics and water-soluble polysaccharides were investigated via radical-scavenging and ferrous (II) ion chelating assays. This paper demonstrates that herbs and roots of D. austriacum and D. botryoides are rich sources of metabolites and could be valuable plants for new biologically active products. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of whole plant metabolites and their antioxidant activity in D. austriacum and D. botryoides.