ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT Plants from the Momordica genus, Curcubitaceae, are used for several purposes, especially for their nutritional and medicinal properties. Commonly known as bitter gourds, melon and cucumber, these plants are characterized by a bitter taste owing to the large content of cucurbitacin compounds. However, several reports have shown an undisputed correlation between the therapeutic activities and polyphenolic flavonoid content. Using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry in combination with multivariate data models such as principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis, three Momordica species (M. foetida Schumach., M. charantia L. and M. balsamina L.) were chemo-taxonomically grouped based on their flavonoid content. Using a conventional mass spectrometric-based approach, thirteen flavonoids were tentatively identified and the three species were found to contain different isomers of the quercetin-, kaempferol- and isorhamnetin-O-glycosides. Our results indicate that Momordica species are overall very rich sources of flavonoids but do contain different forms thereof. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, this is a first report on the flavonoid content of M. balsamina L.