Abstract
Morinda citrifolia or Noni is known as an important dietary supplement, food functional ingredient, or as natural health enhancer that is used throughout the world. Different parts of the plant have been proven to carry compounds that have high medicinal values such as terpenoids, alkaloids and anthraquinones. The stem bark of Morinda citrifolia collected from different types of soil were studied. It aimed to investigate the influence of different geographical factor on its metabolite profile by multivariate statistical analyses of spectral data deduced by NMR methods. A metabolomic approach employing concatenated GCMS and NMR data was utilized to study the relationships between environment and plant metabolism. Morinda citrifolia stem barks were pulverized into fine powder. They were extracted using chloroform and were taken to dryness in a rotary evaporator under reduced pressure. The Morinda citrifolia crudes were proceeded for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) analysis. Visual inspection on the 1H-NMR Morinda citrifolia spectra showed that the different geographical areas have similar profile, but they have different concentration of various constituents. Major constituents identified were aromatics (δH 7.25-7.50), sugars and glycosides (δH 2.25-5.0), fatty acids/aliphatics (δH 0.5-2.0) and aldehydic compound (δH 9.75). However, since the difference among the geographical areas were not clear from visual analysis, the analysis was proceeded using multivariate analysis, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) model. Thus, further analysis was done to examine the consistency of geographical area for each batch of Morinda citrifolia. This is to identify which type of soil is suitable as class model.