Phytochemical profiles of Iris unguicularis Poir. with antioxidant, antibacterial, and anti-Alzheimer activities

Abstract Phytochemical investigation of medicinally important plants has gained great attention, lately. This study aims to investigate the phytochemical constituents of the partitioned extracts (ethyl acetate (AI), dichloromethane (CI) and n-butanol (BI)) derived from the 70% ethanol extract of the rhizomes (RI) of Iris unguicularis Poir. an Algerian-Tunisian endemic plant and to evaluate their biological activities. Seventy constituents of these partitioned extracts were qualitatively characterized by liquid chromatography ion trap time of flight mass spectrometry (LC-MS-IT-TOF) technique. Moreover, quantitative screening of phenolic acids and flavonoids in the studied extracts was accomplished by a previously validated LC-MS/MS method. It was determined that, AI and CI, which were the richest extracts in terms of phytochemical content, showed high antioxidant and antibacterial activities in parallel with their identified constituents, while AI extract was rich in protocatechuic (1080.4 µg analyte/g), 4-OH-benzoic (2218.2 µg/g), syringic (1218.6 µg/g) and pcoumaric (1071.2 µg/g) acids, CI extract has been found to be rich in naringenin (1453.4 µg/g) and ferulic acid (1088.4 µg/g). These results revealed and confirmed the importance of the species and especially the genus rhizomes which have largely been used in folk medicine for the treatment of many diseases. However, all extracts of this endemic plant were inactive at all concentration against acetyl-and butyrylcholinesterase enzymes.