الفهرس 
صفحة العنوانOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 208 |  |  |
| | | from | 208 | | |
Abstract
1. Introduction and aim of work
Arecaceae, previously called the Palmae family, comprises about 200 genera and 2600 species which are distributed throughout tropical and subtropical regions (Renuka et al., 1996). The palms, named “Trees of Life”, are important because they supply people with foods, fibers, shelter, fuels, oils, gums, waxes, poisons, but recently they have become medically important. Some species are used traditionally to treat many different respiratory, digestive, skin, ophthalmic, hepatic diseases and others (Plotkin and Balick, 1984; Gruca et al., 2014). Some biological studies on palm species showed anti-microbial, anti-viral, anti-parasitic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antioxidant, hypoglycaemic, hypolipidemic, hypocholesterolemic, anti-thrombotic, anti-proliferative, anticancer as well as mental and neural properties. Palms, in general, are rich in oils, terpenoids, phenolic compounds, steroidal saponins, fatty acids and some simple alkaloids (especially pyridine derivatives) (Raven et al., 1999). The mesocarp and endocarp oils of many palms include a range of volatile compounds and other terpenoids that are mainly beneficial to health, such as phytosterols, carotenoids and pro-vitamin A, tocols and vitamin E and triterpene pentacyclics. Among the phenolic compounds, phenolic acids, resveratrol and other stilbenes , anthocyanins, flavones, flavonols, dihydroflavonoids, flavan-3-ol, procyanidins and lignans have been described in different parts of the palm species, especially in fruit pulps, seeds and leaves (Agostini-Costa, 2018).
Arenga is a genus of 22 species, distributed in India, Southern China, Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan, throughout South-East Asia and christmas Island to Northern Australia. The genus is economically important as it is useful for sugar, starch and thatch production, and potentially has ornamental value (Flach and Rumawas, 1996). The sweet sap, tapped from inflorescence stem, consumed fresh or processed to obtain brown sugar, palm wine, vinegar and bioethanol (Ibrahim et al., 2018). Different phytoconstituents have been isolated and identified from Arenga genus including ent-kauran-type diterpenes (Liu et al., 2019), phenolic compounds mainly stilbenoids (Yaejeong et al., 2014), steroids and some alkaloids. Some species were reported to be medicinally active being hypocholesterolaemic (Haris, 1994), antioxidant, antimicrobial (Ananth et al., 2014), anti-hypertensive and treat skin allergies (Batoro and Siswanto, 2017), headache, malaria and tuberculosis (Kaunang and Semuel, 2017).