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In this study, we screened 287 plant tissue samples from 175 plant species for their phenolic profiles. The samples were oxidized enzymatically in planta or at high pH in vitro to determine how these two oxidative conditions would alter the initial polyphenol profiles of the plant. Compounds that contained a pyrogallol or dihydroxyphenethyl group were highly active at pH 10. Enzymatic oxidation favored compounds that contained a catechol group, whereas compounds containing a pyrogallol group or monohydroxysubstituted phenolic moieties at most were oxidized less frequently. This study gives a broad overview of the distribution and alkaline oxidative activities of water-soluble phenolic compounds in plants as well as the enzymatic oxidative activities of various plant tissues.

This paper describes the development of a rapid method with ultraperformance liquid chromatography-triple-quadrupole mass spectrometry that can specifically measure group-specific fingerprints from plant extracts for the following polyphenol groups: (1) ellagitannins, (2) gallic acid derivatives, (3) quinic acid derivatives, (4) quercetin-based flavonol glycosides, (5) kaempferol-based flavonol glycosides, and (6) myricetin-based flavonol glycosides. In addition, the method records simultaneously diode array and full scan mass spectrometry data that can be used to later characterize and quantify the main individual polyphenols if necessary. All of this is achieved within the 10 min period of analysis, which makes the presented method a significant addition to the chemistry tools currently available for the rapid analysis of complex polyphenol mixtures from plant extracts.

We developed a combination of methods to estimate the alkaline oxidative conditions of the midgut of insect larvae and to reveal the alkaline and enzymatic oxidative activities for individual phenolic compounds present in the larval host plants. First, we monitored the in vitro isomerization of 5-O-caffeoylquinic acid (5-CQA) into 3-CQA, 4-CQA and 5-CQA at pH 9.0–11.0. Then we calculated the isomer ratios of 3-CQA, 4-CQA and 5-CQA from the frass of eight species of insect herbivores fed on foliage containing 5-CQA. The isomer ratios suggested that the midgut pH of these larvae ranged from 9.4 to around 10.1. Second, we developed an in situ enzymatic oxidation method that enabled oxidation of phenolics in a frozen plant sample at 30 °C by species- and tissue-specific enzymes. Then we measured the alkaline and enzymatic oxidative activities of the individual phenolics in 20 plant species by quantifying the proportion of the compound concentration lost due to the auto-oxidation of a plant extract at pH 10 and due to the enzymatic oxidation of the frozen plant sample at 30 °C. Our results showed that both of the oxidative activity types depended primarily on the type of phenolic compound, but the enzymatic oxidative activity depended also on the plant species and tissue type. This combination of methods offers an approach to characterize a wide array of phenolics that are susceptible to oxidation by the plant enzymes and/or by the alkaline conditions estimated to prevail in the insect midgut. We propose that these kinds of compound-specific results could guide future studies on specific plant-herbivore interactions to focus on the phenolics that are likely to be active rather than inactive plant phenolics.

This paper presents the development of a rapid method with ultraperformance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) for the qualitative and quantitative analyses of plant proanthocyanidins directly from crude plant extracts. The method utilizes a range of cone voltages to achieve the depolymerization step in the ion source of both smaller oligomers and larger polymers. The formed depolymerization products are further fragmented in the collision cell to enable their selective detection. This UPLC-MS/MS method is able to separately quantitate the terminal and extension units of the most common proanthocyanidin subclasses, that is, procyanidins and prodelphinidins. The resulting data enable (1) quantitation of the total proanthocyanidin content, (2) quantitation of total procyanidins and prodelphinidins including the procyanidin/prodelphinidin ratio, (3) estimation of the mean degree of polymerization for the oligomers and polymers, and (4) estimation of how the different procyanidin and prodelphinidin types are distributed along the chromatographic hump typically produced by large proanthocyanidins. All of this is achieved within the 10 min period of analysis, which makes the presented method a significant addition to the chemistry tools currently available for the qualitative and quantitative analyses of complex proanthocyanidin mixtures from plant extracts.

Previous studies of purified phenolic compounds have revealed that some phenolics, especially ellagitannins, can autoxidise under alkaline conditions, which predominate in the midgut of lepidopteran larvae. To facilitate screening for the pro-oxidant activities of all types of phenolic compounds from crude plant extracts, we developed a method that combined our recent spectrophotometric bioactivity method with an additional chromatographic step via UPLC–DAD–MS. This method allowed us to estimate the total pro-oxidant capacities of crude extracts from 12 plant species and to identify the individual phenolic compounds that were responsible for the detected activities. It was found that the pro-oxidant capacities of the plant species (i.e., the concentrations of the easily-oxidised phenolics) varied from 0 to 57 mg/g dry wt, representing from 0% to 46% of the total phenolics from different species. UPLC–DAD–MS analysis revealed that most flavonol and flavone glycosides were only slightly affected by alkaline conditions, thus indicating their low pro-oxidant activity. Interestingly, myricetin-type compounds differed from the other flavonoids, as their concentrations decreased strongly due to alkaline incubation. The same effect was detected for hydrolysable tannins and prodelphinidins, suggesting that a pyrogallol sub-structure could be a key structural component that partially explains their easy oxidation at high pH. Other types of phenolic compounds, such as hydroxycinnamic acids, were relatively active, as well. These findings demonstrate that this method displays the potential to identify most of the active and inactive pro-oxidant phenolic compounds in various plant species.