Occurrence of phenolic compounds in four cultivated buckwheats with particular reference to grain quality.

nutritious grains (Tahir and Farooq [10]), besides foliage being used as a green vegetable (Narain [6]). Four speices of Fagopyrum viz. F. escuJentum Moench, F. sagittatum Gilib., F. tataricum Gaertn. and a new specie s F. kashmirianum Munshi [5] grow in mixed stands at various high altitude areas of Kas-hmir as reported by Tahir and Farooq [9]. The present communication reports the occurrence of some phenolic compounds in foliage and in grains of the four specie s with a view for subsequent improvement of grain quality. The phenolic compounds were separated on paper chromatograms from ethanolic extracts according to Margna and Margna [4], using upper phase of isoamyl alcohol-petrol ether, acetic acid and water (3: I: 1:1) as the solvent system. The spots were located by viewing the chromatograms directly under UV light using a Toshniwal UV lamp with emission maximum at 360 nm. Besides the chromatograms were also viewed under UV light after exposing them to NH J vapour or spraying them with Alel3• In the leaf tissue fractions two compounds separated each at R, 0.33 and 0.94 were located on chro-matograms in each of the four buckwheat specie s; the former spot corresponded to rutin due to its typical UV light absorption characteristics, the latter could not be characterised. The present finding is commen-surate with the widely known occurrence of rutin in the leaves of F. escuJentum and F. tataricum (Singh and Atal [8])