International Journal of Pharmaceutical Science and Research 9 International Journal of Pharmaceutical Science and Research ISSN: 2455-4685 Impact Factor: RJIF 5.28 www.pharmacyjournal.net Volume 3; Issue 2; April 2018; Page No. 09-12 Seabuckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides): A repository of phytochemicals Tabasum Fatima 1 , Amreen Nazir 2 , Bazila Naseer 3 , Syed Zameer Hussain 4 1 Assistant Professor, Kashmir Tibbiya College, Hospital and Research Centre, Jammu and Kashmir, India 2, 3 PhD Scholar, Division of Food Science and Technology, SKUAST, Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir, India 4 Associate Professor, Division of Food Science and Technology, SKUAST, Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir, India Abstract An increased evidence of positive effects of phytochemicals in disease prevention has lead to scientific analysis of many plant materials for their bioactive constituents. Sea buckthorn (SBT) is known to be a good source of antioxidants and other bioactive components which have been found to exert positive effects on human health. A number of pharmacological activities such as cytoprotective, anti-stress, immunomodulatory, hepatoprotective, radioprotective, anti-atherogenic, anti-tumor, anti-microbial and tissue regeneration have been reported in seabuckthorn. Bioactive compounds present in Seabuckthorn may serve as good ingredients for development of functional foods. Keywords: Hippophae rhamnoides, seabuckthorn, hepatoprotective 1. Introduction Seabuckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) is a dioecious, nitrogen fixing, wind pollinated, thornywillow-like shrub (Jeppsson, 2009) [22] . The plant has been reported to grow in low humid (15%), alluvial gravel, wet landslips and various soil conditions. It is found on hills, gully tops, and riverside with brown rusty-scaly shoots (Basistha, 2001, Young and Kallio, 2002, Raj et al., 2011) [4, 9, 23, 27] . Leaves are alternate, narrow and lanceolate, with a silver-graycolour. The male bud consists of four to six apetalous flowers, which produce wind- distributed pollen whereas, the female bud usually consists of one single apetalous flower with one ovary and one ovule. The female plants produce berry-like fruit, 6–9 mm in diameter, soft, juicy and rich in oils. The ripe berries are drupe-like and orange/red in colour, consisting of a single seed surrounded by a soft, fleshy outer tissue. Seeds are dark brown, glossy, ovoid to elliptical in shape and 2.8-4.2 mm in size (Bartish et al., 2002) [23] . It is able to grow and survive well with low precipitations (300 mm), in soils with pH 9.5 and 1.1% saltswhich makeit possible to be planted even in marginal soils. Natural distribution area for sea buckthorn include China, Mongolia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Latvia, Romania, Great Britain, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Canada. In general, the global distribution pattern of Sea buckthorn show that the plant is concentrated mostly in the cold regions. 2. Phytochemistry The whole plant (fruits, roots, leaves, and stem) is economically important.SBT berries have been proved to be a rich source of antioxidants due to presence of flavonols such as, rutin, quercetin, myricetin, kaempferol, is orhamnetin (Hibasami et al., 2005) [19] , tocopherols and tocotrienols (Kallio et al., 2002) [9, 23] and carotenoids. Moreover, various extracts of sea buckthorn are also known to exhibit marked antioxidant activity (Suleyman et al., 2001; Chauhan et al., 2007) [30, 6] . Bioactive substances whichmainly include flavonoids, carotenoids, free and esterified sterols, triterpenols, and isoprenols have also been reported in SBT leaf extract. The leaves are an equally rich sourceof important antioxidants including carotene, vitamin E, catechin, elagic acid, ferulic acid and folic acid. The polyphenolic compounds such as tannin fraction was isolated from leaves and the active components were hydrolysable gallo- and ellagi-tannins of monomeric type which includes strictinin, isostrictinin, casuarinin, casuarictin (Shipulina et al., 2007) [29] . Bioactive phenolic constituents, such as quercetin-3-O-galactoside, quercetin-3-O-glucoside, kaempferol and isorhamnetin were quantified in aqueous and hydroalcoholic SBT leaf extracts by RP-HPLC (Upadhyay et al., 2010) [32] . Oil from sea buckthorn contains several bioactive components such as vitamin E, vitamin K, carotenoids, and β-70 sitosterol (Zeb, 2004) [38] . Recent studies have shown that oil extracts obtained from the berries of sea buckthorn are rich in monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) (Yang et al., 2001) [33, 34] , tocopherols, tocotrienols (Kallio et al., 2002) [9, 23] , carotenoids, and other bioactive compounds. The leaves of sea buckthorn are rich in kaempferol-3-O- β-D-(6″-O-coumaryl) glycoside, 1- feruloyl-β-D-glucopyranoside, isorhamnetin-3-O-glucoside, quercetin-3-O-β-D glucopyranoside, quercetin-3-O-β-D- glucopyranosyl-7-O-α-L-rhamnopyrano side, and is orhamnetin-3-O-rutinoside. Studies on SBT suggested that nine fractions, four monomeric flavan-3-ols, catechin, epicatechin, gallocatechin, and epigallocatechin, along with two dimeric procyanidins, catechin (4α-8) catechin and catechin (4α-8) epicatechin, can be obtained from the extracts of sea buckthorn seeds (Fan et al., 2007; Kim et al., 2011; Upadhyay et al., 2010) [10, 24, 32] . Various SBT phytoconstituents along with medicinal properties are presented in table 1.