Abstract
Phyllanthus amarus Schum and Thonn is a member of family Euphorbiaceae and highly used in Indian system of medicine to cure numerous human ailments. The lignans, Phyllanthin and hypophyllanthin present in plant are reported as therapeutically active constituents and serve as hepatoprotective agents. We studied on 23 natural populations of P. amarus, collected from different geographical regions of India, which were differed in altitude (114 - 5295 ft). The phyllanthin content was extracted and quantified in different parts of P. amarus using high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) method at 282 nm wavelength. Out of 23 populations, 16 populations showed increased phyllanthin content with elevated altitude. The highest amount of phyllanthin was found in the leaves followed by fruits and stem, whilst the roots have the least amount of phyllanthin. The highest and lowest phyllanthin content on dry weight basis was 3.163 mg/g in population P-21 at 2214 ft and 1.431 mg/g in population P-2 at 114 ft and a positive correlation was observed in 16 populations for phyllanthin content with the increased altitude. These results showed the importance of habitat characteristics in the biosynthesis of phyllanthin compound and possible mechanism may involve their antioxidant activity.