Abstract:
Butterfly Pea (Clitoria ternatea L.) is a twining herbal plant belonging to family Fabaceae. The C. ternatea has potential medicinal values, therefore, traditionally, used in Ayurvedic medicine to cure stress, infertility, gonorrhoea, and as a food colouring agent. The modern science reported a variety of phytochemicals present in C. ternatea, and its application in agriculture and medicine. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the variations in agronomic features and phytochemical contents in different morphotypes (blue single petal, blue multi-petal, white single-petal, white multi-petal, and purple single-petal) of C. ternatea plants available in Sri Lanka. Morphological characters of flowers, leaves and roots were carried out. Preliminary phytochemical anal-ysis for phenols, flavonoids, tannins, alkaloids, glycosides, steroids and Thin Layer Chromatog-raphy (TLC) fingerprint analysis were conducted according to the previously published methods. Total phenol content, total phenol content and total antioxidant capacity were conducted using a spectrophotometer. Data were analyzed using SAS 9.4 statistical packages and DMRT was performed to know the best treatment combination at p-value of 0.05. The results showed that all five types of plants were exhibited the presence of all major phytochemicals, but flavonoids were significantly higher in flowers of blue multi-petal and purple single-petal plants. Total phenolic content was significantly higher in flower (53.62 mg GAE/g), leaves (73.32 mg GAE/g), and roots (52.67 mg GAE/g) of purple single-petal and blue colour multi-petal plants, respectively. Total flavonoid content was significantly higher in flower (34.01 mg QE/g), leaves (40.02 mg QE/g), and roots (18.40 mg QE/g) of blue multi-petal plant type. Similarly, radical scavenging capacity tested by DPPH assay exhibited significantly higher scavenging capacity in flower (2.93 mg TE/g), leave (3.77 mg TE/g), and root (3.40 mg TE/g) of white colour multi-petal, blue colour single petals and blue colure multi-petals, respectively at p < 0.05. This study revealed that tested phytochemical contents vary according to the different flower colours of C. ternatea. Therefore, it is suggested to cultivate varieties/morphotypes with a higher content of phytochemicals and antioxidant capacity for commercial purposes
