PHYTOCHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF MISTLETOE (Viscum album L.) BY FTIR SPECTROSCOPY

The use of Viscum album as a remedy has ancient tradition in treating various diseases. The cytotoxic and immunomodulatory properties of different Viscum album preparations have been intensively studied in the last years. Besides antitumoral and quality of life–promoting activities Viscum album applications reduce side effects of conventional anticancer therapies. Chemical properties of Viscum album could be influenced by factors like type of host, geographical locations, mistletoe harvesting season, freshenes of plant (fresh mistletoe/comercial tea pruducts/ dried fresh mistletoe, etc.). Information regarding the functional group presence in different mistletoe comercial products like teas and fresh leaves from the continental and coastal part of Croatia is lacking. We hypotheise that data obtained by FTIR spectroscopy will show a high correlation with the elemental composition of mistletoe samples. The FTIR spectra of the eight samples showed distinct features that enabled their discrimination through Principal Componenent Analysis (PCA) models with high accuracy. Regardless of the type of the sample, PCA showed that the location of a sample has substantial influence on the obtained FTIR results, so it is possible to distinguish the FTIR spectra of continental from coastal samples, as well as samples from eastern part of Croatia from those from central Croatia.