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Evaluation of medicinal plants using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) combined with chemometric techniques

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Abstract

Medicinal plants play a vital role in herbal medical field and allopathic medicine field industry. Chemical and spectroscopic studies of Taraxacum officinale, Hyoscyamus niger, Ajuga bracteosa, Elaeagnus angustifolia, Camellia sinensis, and Berberis lyceum are conducted in this paper by using a 532-nm Nd:YAG laser in an open air environment. These medicinal plant's leaves, roots, seed, and flowers are used to treat a range of diseases by the locals. It is crucial to be able to distinguish between beneficial and detrimental metal elements in these plants. We demonstrated how various elements are categorized and how roots, leaves, seeds and flowers of same plants differ from each other on the basis of elemental analysis. Furthermore, for classification purpose, different classification models, partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), k-nearest neighbors (kNN), and principal component analysis (PCA) are used. We found silicon (Si), aluminum (Al), iron (Fe), copper (Cu), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sodium (Na), potassium (K), manganese (Mn), phosphorous (P), and vanadium (V) in all of the medicinal plant samples with a molecular form of carbon and nitrogen band. We detected Ca, Mg, Si, and P as primary components in all of the plant samples, as well as V, Fe, Mn, Al, and Ti as essential medicinal metals, and additional trace elements like Si, Sr, and Al. The result’s findings show that the PLS-DA classification model with single normal variate (SNV) preprocessing method is the most effective classification model for different types of plant samples. The average correct classification rate obtained for PLS-DA with SNV is 95%. Moreover, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) was successfully employed to perform rapid, sensitive, and quantitative trace element analysis on medicinal herbs and plant samples.

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Data availability is applicable upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Prof. Mujtaba Shah, Department of Botany, Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan for providing few medicinal plant samples used in the research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Optics and Photonics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

    Muhammad Nouman Khan, Qianqian Wang & Bushra Sana Idrees

  2. Key Laboratory of Photonic Information Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Muhammad Nouman Khan, Qianqian Wang & Bushra Sana Idrees

  3. Yangtze Delta Region Academy of Beijing Institute of Technology, Jiaxing, 314033, China

    Qianqian Wang

  4. Department of Physics, Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan

    Rijah Waheed, Ajaz Ul Haq & Muhammad Abrar

  5. Department of Physics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Pakistan

    Yasir Jamil

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All authors have participated in (a) conception and design, or analysis and interpretation of the data; (b) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (c) approval of the final version. All the authors listed have approved the manuscript that is enclosed.

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Correspondence to Muhammad Nouman Khan.

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Nouman Khan, M., Wang, Q., Idrees, B.S. et al. Evaluation of medicinal plants using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) combined with chemometric techniques. Lasers Med Sci 38, 149 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10103-023-03805-2

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