Recent advances in phytochemical techniques

Mankind has been dependent on plants from time immemorial for his primary needs, and as civilization advanced, the application of plants and plant products extended to drugs, cosmetics, perfumes, dyes, pesticides, fuels, food supplements, nutraceuticals etc. The property of a plant depends on its chemical constituents, and the plant kingdom represents an extraordinary reservoir of molecules, synthesized from the fascinating laboratory of plants, and phytochemistry deals with these compounds. Scientific efforts so far have resulted in sorting around 2 lakhs natural products with 6,000 skeletons. The systematic approach to phytochemical research involves extraction of the plant material, separation and purification of the constituents and structure elucidation. 

In the extraction process, the common organic solvents are slowly being replaced by more efficient solvents like super critical CO2, and further solventless extraction techniques utilizing pressure, heat, filtration, and agitation to isolate desired compounds from plant material for specific applications are getting more popular. Solid Phase Micro Extraction (SPME) is an efficient solvent-free sample preparation technique where advancements in fibre coatings and hyphenations have created significant improvements in the extraction efficiencies. Advances in ambient analytical techniques such as Head Space (HS) analyses for volatile chemicals and Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectrometry (DARTMS) for non-volatile chemicals have eliminated the laborious sample preparation steps.

The advancements in hyphenated analytical techniques such as LC-MS and GC-MS have saved the time and effort significantly. Recently, the computational tools such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning were incorporated to predict the spectra of complex phytochemicals and helps in processing the large quantity of spectroscopic data with respect to structural features, and has wide applications in plant metabolomics, chemical fingerprinting, chemical taxonomy, biosynthesis and phylogenetic studies, prediction of pharmacological and toxicological properties and virtual screening or in silico studies.

Overall, from the time consuming conventional wet-lab experiments, the phytochemists took the historical jump to instrumental analyses, and currently computer technology, especially Artificial Intelligence as well as Machine Learning, is bringing a paradigm shift in phytochemistry field as well. Imbibing the recent developments in various sectors of Science and Technology, phytochemists are now working in boarder areas with other subjects such as ecology, biotechnology, taxonomy, leading to groundbreaking discoveries, contributing significantly in unravel the secrets of nature.

Audience Take Away Notes:
•Phytochemical diversity
•Phytochemical techniques
•Hyphenated analytical techniques 
•Recent advances in phytochemical analytical techniques

K. B. Rameshkumar took his M.Sc Chemistry degree from St. Thomas College, Thrissur in 1997 and joined Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (JNTBGRI), Thiruvananthapuram in 1998 as a scientific staff. He took his Ph.D in Chemistry in the topic, ‘Phytochemical investigation of some Indian medicinal plants’from the University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram in 2008. The area of his specialization is Phytochemistry and the current interests are isolation and structure elucidation of phytochemicals, hyphenated analytical techniques, especially GC-MS and LC-MS, chemistry of essential oils and fixed oils, chemotaxonomy, chemical ecology, fragrance creation and herbal technology start-ups. In the tenure of 28 years of research, he had worked on the phytochemistry of several hitherto uninvestigated endemic plants of the Western Ghats region and identified new compounds and new natural sources of aromatic and bioactive compounds, in addition to new plant species. He had received the prestigious Kerala Academy of Sciences Fellowship (FAS), Young Scientist award by the Govt. of Kerala, K.S. Manilal Award by the Indian Association for Angiosperm Taxonomy, and his students had bagged around 30 best presentation awards in various seminars. He had visited Sultan Quaboos University, Muscat, Oman in 2011, Malaysia during 2013, 2015, 2018 and 2023, Sri Lanka in 2018 and 2025, Singapore in 2024, 2025 and 2026, Bosnia 2025 and Thailand 2026. He had organized around 70 training programmes, workshops and seminars in phytochemistry related fields, and delivered around 130 invited lectures including International Seminars abroad. He was the organizing secretary of the International Seminar on Phytochemistry from 2015 onwards. He had 68 research papers with a total impact factor >120, and 2 books on Phytochemistry of Garcinia species, and Cyperaceae species, in addition to more than 170 abstracts in seminar proceedings, 28 general articles and has an H index of 24. He had produced 7 Ph.Ds and supervised more than 60 M.Sc dissertation students. He is the Executive Council Member, Society for Ethnobotanists, Kerala Chapter, and Kerala Academy of Sciences, Thiruvananthapuram, and the editorial board member of Journal of Natural Medicines. He was a member of the Board of Studies in Chemistry, Mar Ivanios College, Thiruvananthapuram, Member, Research Advisory Council, Dale View College of Pharmacy, Thiruvananthapuram, and Member, Research Advisory Committee, Arya Vaidya Sala, Kottakkal. He was the General Secretary of Kerala Academy of Sciences, a premier professional body of Scientists and Academicians in Kerala, from 2018 to 2024. He is the Scientist-in Charge of the Central Instrumentation Facility at JNTBGRI, and currently holding the position of Senior Principal Scientist and Head of the Division, Phytochemistry and Phytopharmacology Division, KSCSTE-JNTBGRI, Thiruvananthapuram.