African Under-Utilized Medicinal Leafy Vegetables Studied by Microtiter Plate Assays and High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography–Planar Assays

Biological activities of six under-utilized medicinal leafy vegetable plants indigenous to Africa, i.e ., Basella alba , Crassocephalum rubens , Gnetum africanum , Launaea taraxacifolia, Solanecio biafrae , and Solanum macrocarpon , were investigated via two independent techniques. The total phenolic content (TPC) was determined, and six microtiter plate assays were applied after extraction and fractionation. Three were antioxidant in vitro assays, i.e ., ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), cupric reduction antioxidant capacity (CUPRAC), and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging, and the others were enzyme (acetylcholinesterase, butyrylcholinesterase, and tyrosinase) inhibition assays. The highest TPC and antioxidant activity from all the methods were obtained from polar and medium polar fractions of C. rubens, S. biafrae, and S. macrocarpon . The highest acetyl- and butyrylcholinesterase inhibition was exhibited by polar fractions of S. biafrae , C. rubens, and L. taraxacifolia , the latter comparable to galantamine. The highest tyrosinase inhibition was observed in the n -butanol fraction of C. rubens and ethyl acetate fraction of S. biafrae. In vitro assay results of the different extracts and fractions were mostly in agreement with the bioactivity profiling via high-performance thin-layer chromatography–multi-imaging–effect-directed analysis, exploiting nine different planar assays. Several separated compounds of the plant extracts showed antioxidant, α- glucosidase, α- amylase, acetyl- and butyrylcholinesterase-inhibiting, Gram-positive/-negative antimicrobial, cytotoxic, and genotoxic activities. A prominent apolar bioactive compound zone was tentatively assigned to fatty acids, in particular linolenic acid, via electrospray ionization high-resolution mass spectrometry. The detected antioxidant, antimicrobial, antidiabetic, anticholinesterase, cytotoxic, and genotoxic potentials of these vegetable plants, in particular C. rubens, S. biafrae , and S. macrocarpon , may validate some of their ethnomedicinal uses.