Present work was carried out with a view to develop chemical fingerprints to differentiate the herbal drugs Taxus baccata
L. and Abies webbiana (Wall ex D. Don) Lindl. Both the plants are commonly called as Talisapatra in India and having
different medicinal applications. T. baccata is native to Europe and A. webbiana is found in India and also used in
traditional medicine. Dried leaves of both the plant are morphologically similar and in powdered form it is very difficult
to differentiate them and hence there are chances for adulteration and also misuse of the herbs. In this project
phytochemical, spectroscopic (UV-Visible, FT-IR and NMR) and chromatographic techniques (HPTLC and HPLC) were
applied to obtain the chemical fingerprints of selected herbs. A. webbiana contained higher level of total phenolic
compounds (6301.27 mg GAE / 100 g) when compared to T. baccata (977.45 mg GAE / 100 g). UV-Visible absorbance
at 577 and 663 nm are unique for T. baccata. FT-IR peaks at 3403, 1030 and 577 cm-1 were unique for T. baccata while A.
webbiana exhibited unique peak at 3371, 1059 and 613 cm-1
. NMR signals revealed remarkable difference between
chloroform extracts of T. baccata from A. webbiana. HPTLC profile exhibited unique bands with Rf value of 0.11, 0.25,
0.62, 0.68, 0.91 and 097 for T. baccata and A. webbiana exhibited unique spots with Rf value of 0.05, 0.27, 0.38, 0.44,
0.65, 0.72 and 0.93. Unique HPLC peaks for T. baccata were 2.07, 2.28, 4.86, 5.08, 5.97 and 6.86 min whereas A. webbiana
revealed unique peaks at 1.90, 2.00 International Journal of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemical Researchand 4.52 min. Chemical fingerprint results obtained from the present work would be
useful in differentiating T. baccata from A. webbiana.