Studies on Structure Elucidation of Aconitum Alkaloids Using LC-ESI-MS Technique

Development of a rapid, sensitive and specific liquid chromatography-electron spray-mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS) method as an effective tool for identification of different types of alkaloids from Aconitum chasmanthum collected from Sopi Kargil that can be used for quality checking of aconitum formulations. Chromatographic separation were achieved on C18 column and peaks determined by mass spectrometry in positive and negative modes. Chromatographic conditions were optimized to obtain high resolution and short run time. Use of the validated method led to tentative identification of seven alkaloids heterophylisine, atidine, atisine, chasm aconitine, 3-bichaconine, neoline and heteroatisine out of the twelve alkaloids picked from total ion chromatogram at the retention time of 1.74- 13.75 m on the basis of their retention times and fragmentation patterns in MS-MS data. Results showed that the positive mode response was much higher than the negative ion mode as most of the characteristic and adduct peaks were obtained in positive mode. Moreover this method has proved to be an effective tool to analyse the components of especially endangered plant species and can be used in quality control.