Phytochemical composition and antioxidant potential of leaves of Butea parviflora Roxb. ex DC. (Fabaceae): A fodder plant of Asian elephants

Introduction

Plants constitute important biological resources for wildlife, livestock and human communities, providing essential nutrients and a wide range of biologically active compounds (Mbuni et al., 2020; Chen et al., 2024) [2, 1] . Among different plant parts, leaves are an important food resource for herbivorous animals, supplying carbohydrates, proteins, minerals and other nutrients (Lee, 2018; Anoop et al., 2023) [4,3] . The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) depends extensively on diverse plant species and their foliage for sustenance (Behera et al., 2020; Sharma et al., 2025; Dhamdhere et al., 2026; Mishra et al., 2026) [5,6,7,8] . Therefore, understanding the nutritional quality and biochemical composition of plants utilized as fodder is important for assessing their dietary significance (Capstaff et al., 2018; Navale et al., 2022) [9,10] . In addition to primary nutrients, leaves contain secondary metabolites which may possess biological activities and make them nutraceutical foods (Shad et al., 2014; Yeshi et al., 2022; Roy et al., 2022; Riaz et al., 2023) [12,13,14,11] . Evaluation of these constituents can consequently provide useful information on the nutritional and nutraceutical value of wildlife fodder plants. In this context, the genus Butea, belonging to the family Fabaceae, is of particular interest because its members are woody plants widely distributed in tropical and subtropical regions of Asia (Tandon et al., 2003) [15] . Within this genus, Butea parviflora is associated with herbivorous wildlife, and its leaves have been reported as a fodder resource of the Asian elephant (Dhamdhere et al., 2026) [7] . Based on this ecological relevance, B. parviflora was selected for the present investigation to evaluate the biochemical characteristics of its leaves. Such evaluation is particularly relevant because the nutritional and phytochemical composition of foliage may influence its value as a natural food resource for herbivorous wildlife. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to assess the nutritional and phytochemical composition of Butea parviflora leaves. Nutritional analysis was carried out to determine major constituents contributing to their dietary value, while qualitative phytochemical screening was performed to identify important groups of primary and secondary metabolites. The findings are expected to provide baseline information on the nutritional and nutraceutical characteristics of the leaves and contribute to a bet ter understanding of the importance of evaluating wildlife fodder plants for dietary assessment, habitat management and wildlife conservation.

Materials and Methods

To address this objective, leaves of B. parviflora were collected from the Mahanadi River areas of Cuttack, Odisha (Figure 2). Leaf extracts were prepared using aqueous, ethanol and n-hexane solvents through a Soxhlet apparatus and subjected to qualitative phytochemical screening (Jena et al., 2025; Rani et al., 2025) [16,17] . Primary metabolites examined included proteins, carbohydrates, starch, sucrose, lipids and amino acids, while secondary or bioactive compound groups assessed included tannins, saponins, flavonoids, terpenoids, phenolic groups, reducing sugars, steroids and alkaloids (Marndi et al., 2024) [18] . Based on the qualitative screening, selected secondary metabolites were subsequently quantified in the leaves (Kumari et al., 2026) [19] . Finally, the aqueous and ethanol extracts were evaluated for antioxidant activity using the DPPH radical-scavenging assay (Soni et al., 2026) [20] .

Figure 1. Leaves of B. parviflora

Results and Discussion

The qualitative screening revealed that the aqueous and ethanol extracts contained proteins and carbohydrates (Table 1). Starch, sucrose, lipids and amino acids were not detected in either of these extracts.

The n-hexane extract was negative for all six tested primary metabolites (Table 1). The findings indicate that the detectable primary metabolites were associated mainly with the aqueous and ethanol fractions. Four bioactive groups (tannins, saponins, flavonoids and reducing sugars) were detected in both aqueous and ethanol extracts. Terpenoids, phenolic groups, steroids and alkaloids were not detected in either extract. All tested secondary metabolite groups were negative in the n-hexane extract (Table 2). Thus, the qualitative profile indicates that aqueous and ethanol solvents were more effective than n-hexane in extracting the phytochemical groups detected by the applied screening methods. Quantitative analysis showed that tannins were present at 90.05 mg/100 mL, while saponins were recorded at 4.80%. Total phenols were measured at 8.07 mg/100 mL, and total flavonoids at 0.24 mg/mL (Table 3). Among the results, tannins showed the highest numerical value within their respective reported units. However, because tannins, saponins, total phenols and total flavonoids were expressed in different units, their numerical values should not be directly compared as indicators of absolute abundance. The detection of these phytochemical constituents, particularly phenolic and flavonoid compounds, provided a basis for further evaluating the antioxidant potential of the aqueous and ethanol extracts. Both extracts demonstrated DPPH radical-scavenging activity at all tested concentrations. In the ethanol extract, inhibition increased progressively from 43.42% at 0.0625 mg/mL to 51.48% at 1.0 mg/mL, while in the aqueous extract, inhibition increased from 44.07% to 50.90% over the same concentration range (Table 4; Figure 3). The ethanol extract showed a slightly higher inhibition than the aqueous extract at every tested concentration except the lower concentration range where the aqueous extract also demonstrated comparable activity. At the highest concentration, the ethanol extract produced 51.48% inhibition compared with 50.90% for the aqueous extract, a difference of only 0.58 percentage points (Table 4; Figure 3).

Conclusion

The present study demonstrates that the leaves of Butea parviflora contain important primary and secondary metabolites and exhibit concentration-dependent DPPH radical-scavenging activity. Together, these findings provide baseline information on the biochemical and antioxidant characteristics of a foliage resource reported as fodder for Asian elephants and other herbivorous wildlife. However, the results alone do not establish the overall dietary or nutraceutical value of the plant. Rather, they highlight the importance of scientifically evaluating the nutritional and phytochemical properties of wildlife fodder plants to better understand the quality of their available food resources. In this context, similar investigations involving other important fodder species can generate valuable information on their nutritional and biochemical characteristics and may contribute to evidence-based habitat management, fodder-plant conservation and longterm wildlife conservation planning.

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21. How to cite this article: Rout S, Kumar N, Das K, Dehar PS, Kumar S. Phytochemical composition and antioxidant potential of leaves of Butea parviflora Roxb. ex DC. (Fabaceae): A fodder plant of Asian elephants. International Journal of Geography, Geology and Environment. 2026;8(9):222-226. doi: https://www. doi.org/10.22271/27067483.2026.v8.i9c.882