Tectona grandis Linn. f. secondary metabolites and their bioactive potential: a review

Tectona grandis Linn. f. (teak) is one of the most appreciated high-quality timber all over the world due to its economic value and wide array of applications. This tropical hardwood presents outstanding characteristics like pleasing aesthetic appearance, strength, lightness, ease of working, dimensional stability, and decay resistance. The latter quality is mainly ascribed to its extractives, which contain biologically active compounds (mainly quinones and anthraquinones) that confer a natural resistance against termites and fungi. This review focuses on teak secondary metabolites and the bioactivity potential of heartwood extractives. Furthermore, it covers the generalities of the teak tree and gives an overview on the approaches aimed to valorize the wastes from woodworking enterprises as a possible source of functional extractives and as an eco-friendly raw material. Notwithstanding the efforts made to elu-cidate the compounds present in teak wood, further research is needed to un-derstand the chemical bases of its natural resistance to decay. Moreover, there is a lack of economic, technical, and ecotoxicity feasibility studies regarding extractives as a source of bioactive molecules for pharmaceutical, food, or cosmetics purposes.