Chemistry of Medicinal Plants, Foods, and Natural Products 2015

Copyright © 2015 Shixin Deng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Medicinal plants and natural products have been demonstrated to possess diversified health benefits for thousands of years by traditional uses and modern scientific research. An increased global demand has been observed over years. In 2014, we published the first special issue of Chemistry of Medicinal Plants, Foods, and Natural Products, aiming to address safety, identity, and efficacy of the natural entities. As a continuing program, we edited a special issue for 2015. The challenge for raw materials and finished products of botanicals attracts public and scientific communities. The safety and efficacy of these medicinal natural products are closely associated with their identity, authenticity, and quality, which in turn relate to many factors, such as geographical conditions (soil, sunlight, precipitation, and air) and postgrowth factors (harvesting, storage, transportation, manufacturing processes, etc.). In this special issue, we have invited original research articles addressing the novel analytical method development and validation, methodology and instrumentation improvement, chemical characterization , and biological activities of plant materials, extracts, and pure phytochemicals. Sesquiterpene lactones represent a large group of natural compounds with diversified biological activities. B. Ivanescu et al. presented an overview of methodology on chemical extraction, identification, and quantification, as well as a literature review of biological activities of sesquiterpene lactones found in Artemisia genus. Z. Nagy et al. investigated variation of polyphenols, capsaicinoids, and vitamin C in six hybrids of chili peppers with HPLC during ripening period. By means of different detectors, 7 major capsaicinoids, many polyphenols, and vitamin C were identified and quantified. Based on these results, authors observed that the amounts of vitamin C increased and most of polyphenols kept the same level in all hybrids, while major capsaicinoids variation depended on different hybrid peppers during ripening. J. K. Kim et al. addressed the comparison of the nutritional and chemical properties and sensory attributes of Seomae mugwort and the commonly consumed species Artemisia princeps Pamp. and concluded that Seomae mugwort had higher contents of polyunsaturated fatty acids, total phenolic compounds, vitamin C, and essential amino acids and a better radical scavenging activity and more diverse volatile compounds than A. princeps. Q. Wu and X. Gong used LabVIEW, a G language-based virtual instrument software, to establish a …