I think the easiest and cheapest ways to do preliminary work for qualitative/quantitative (primary & secondary) is by using TLC/HPTLC methods.After this, you can continue for further works by using GCMS, LCMS or others.

Please insert the name of the plant in the Camag HPTLC/TLC data base, I hope you can find some published works of your plant(s). Good luck!

http://www.camag.com/en/tlc_hptlc/customer_magazine_cbs/ccbs_database.cfm

For quantitative analysis of primary and secondary metabolites you can follow this book "Standard methods of biochemical analysis" by S R Thimmaiah for phytochemical and biochemical analysis"

Hi Sachet,

I think it's better for you to extract the metabolite and apply TLC method. you can use Thin layer chromatographic analysis of drugs by Wagner. 

thank you @ asih triastuti, asha jyoti bharati,Gunawan Indrayanto,Namraj Dhami...

and respected Namraj dhami please send that paper to my mail- [email protected], because it is not accessible in my university

SOrry for you all, I need some chemical test like in some papers like I had attached here.

Check if this link is helpful:

http://www.slideshare.net/rahulbs89/extraction-of-plant-contituents

@B.R. Rajeswara Rao - its a nice slide show sir, but i am still in confusion that how the gc-ms helps in quantifying the primary and secondary metabolites? can you please explain it or can you please send some more references?

I am attaching some more references. The above link includes several slide shows and text books as well.

@ B. R. Rajeshwara Rao- thank you so much for those good books and references sir ji.

There are all kinds of primary and secondary metabolites. The best way forward to quantify them would be to deal with individual metabolite possibly by chromatographic  methods such as GC, HPLC etc..

• Thank you David sir....

Here are few more publications that may be of interest to you:

For non-polar metabolites such as volatiles you can analyze with  e.g. GC-MS and quantify individual compounds using an internal or external standard

For the polar metabolites e.g. alkaloids, LC-MS, LC-QTOF can be used and also quantified using standards 

For quantitative assessment

Try to find out total primary and secondary metabolite content

Like total carbohydrate, total phenol, total flavonoids, total saponins, total glycoside, total tannin and total alkaloids. (There are many reported paper on this-just google).

Then you may go for specific quantitative estimation of particular chemicals of interest using sophisticated method, like spectrophotometer, GC, GC-MC, LCMS, HPLC and HPTLC etc.

thank you @ Neeraj Sethiya and Lucy Murungi