Detection, Identification and Structural Elucidation of Flavonoids using Liquid Chromatography Coupled to Mass Spectrometry

Flavonoids are one of the most common secondary metabolites occurring in plants. Their activity in the Central Nervous System (CNS) including sedative, anxiolytic, anti-convulsive, anti-depressant and neuro-protective actions is well known and documented. The most popular methods for detection, identification and structural elucidation of flavonoids are these based on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometry (MS). NMR allows rapid, high throughput analysis of crude extracts and also gives stereochemical details about identified substances. However, these methods are expensive and less sensitive than MS-based techniques. Combining High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with MS detection gives the most powerful tool for analysis of flavonoids occurring in plants. There is a lot of different approaches to use LC/MS based techniques for identification of flavonoids and this short review shows the most important.