Identification and quantification of tricin present in medicinal herbs, plant foods and by-products using UPLC-QTOF-MS

Tricin, one of the flavones present in edible Poaceae species, was shown to interfere with intestinal inflammatory-related carcinogenesis and suppress metastasis in colon cancer mice models. Those botanical foods and medicinal herbs which contain high content of tricin may be considered as health supplements for colon health. Hence, the present study aimed to identify and quantify the content of tricin in various medicinal herbs, edible botanicals and some agricultural by-products by LC-MS. A list of “top 10 tricin-rich botanicals/medicinal herbs” was built. From the results, the top three high tricin content botanicals are the dried culms of Triticum aestivum (wheat straw), dried culms of Oryza sativa (rice straw) and mature fruits of Imperata cylindrica. Furthermore, a simple, straightforward isolation method has been developed to isolate tricin from wheat straw which achieved 50% isolation rate (percentage yield of 0.05% w/w) with purity of not less than 98%.