Objective: The quality control of pharmaceutical natural products starts from the botanical raw materials. One of the emerging issue is to ensure the authenticity of the botanical raw material from contamination of unwanted material such as similar or confused species. FTIR spectroscopy combined with chemometrics method were used for identification and authentication of meniran hijau (Phyllanthus niruri) from its confused species named meniran merah (Phyllanthus urinaria). Methods: The procedures was based on the non destructive and reagent free method, FTIR spectroscopy combined with chemometrics. FTIR spectra of all samples were recorded in the wavenumber range 4000-400 cm-1 and then subjected for four different pre-processing methods, namely standard normal variate (SNV), normalization, and first and second order derivative spectra, were compared. Combination of FTIR spectra with principal component analysis (PCA) and calibration models of partial least square-Determinant Analysis (PLS-DA) were used to distinguish the two species of meniran.
Results: Pre-processing spectral data by 9 points Savitzky-Golay Smoothing and normalization gave result of best group separation. The PCA model reveals good separation to determinate the two subjected species and can be used as model for PLS analysis. Whereas the developed PLS model was useful for classifying new samples of meniran.
Conclusion: The developed method could be used for identification and authentication of P.niruri and could be a powerful, rapid, and simple tool to support the quality control of the natural product medicines.