https://ajpojournals.org/journals/index.php/EJB <p>European Journal of Biology is an open access journal hosted by AJPO Journals USA LLC. The journal assigns an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) of 2709-6513 to each published article. European Journal of Biology aims at the study of life. It covers branches of biology botany which is the study of plant e.g. (pale botany, ecology morphology, genetics, cytology plant physiology, taxonomy, anatomy) and zoology the study of animals e.g. (entomology, ethology, herpetology, cytology). Its indexed in google scholar, Crossref (DOI), Ebscohost, Research Gate among others.</p> AJPO Journals Limited en-US European Journal of Biology 2709-6513 <p>Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License</a> that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.</p> https://ajpojournals.org/journals/index.php/EJB/article/view/1706 <p><strong>Purpose:</strong> Plant kingdom has long served as a prolific source of useful drugs, foods additives, flavouring agents, colourants, binders, and lubricants. <em>Dieffenbachia seguine</em> (Areceae is claimed to have many folklore uses. Primarily it is used as an ornamental and sometimes employed for medicinal and other miscellaneous uses). The stem and root extracts have been described as a narcotic, a gastric and kidney irritant and historically used as arrow poisons, pounded. It is used as a choleretic, female aphrodisiac, and contraceptive and to treat dropsy, gout, dysmenorrhea, impotence, and sterility. The present study aimed at carrying out phytochemical screening and purification of extracts of the plant.</p> <p><strong>Materials and Methods:</strong> Powdered sample of the plant was extracted successively with hexane, ethylacetate and methanol.</p> <p><strong>Findings:</strong> Preliminary qualitative phytochemical screening showed presence of flavonoids, tannins, alkaloids, glycosides, anthraquinones, steroids and triterpenoids. Saponins was however, was not detected in any of the extracts. The hexane and ethyl acetate extracts (2 g) were subjected to silica gel (70-230 mesh) column chromatography and similar fractions were pulled together through thin layer chromatography analysis to obtain fractions Ds-1, Ds-2 and Ds-3 which were subjected to nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.</p> <p><strong>Implications to Theory, Practice and Policy:</strong> Fractions Ds-1, Ds-2 and Ds-3 were identified as octadecanoic acid, sitosterol and β-sitostenone, respectively, based on analysis of NMR spectra and comparison with reported data. <em>Dieffenbachia seguine </em>extracts are rich sources of phytochemicals which can be purified for more compounds</p> Akoso Vershima Ezindu Odemelam Igoli J. O Toranyiin Copyright (c) 2023 Akoso Vershima, Ezindu-Odemelam , Igoli J. O, Toranyiin T. A http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2023-12-20 2023-12-20 8 2 1 14 10.47672/ejb.1706