ABSTRACT
The Brazilian Cerrado is the largest savanna region in South America and belongs to the 36 noted biodiversity hotspots that shelters 1.5% of endemic plants of the world. The Cerrado Biome is a recognized source of great biodiversity in danger of extinction that up to date, has lost 80% of the original area due to the growth of crop and cattle agro-industries. The stress promoted by the hot and dry climate from April until September, a reflection of the seasonal changes, can stimulate a chemical diversity of the Cerrado flora. This chapter gives a review of the natural products from the Goiás Cerrado, the importance of Ethnobotany and Brazilian traditional medicine, used as a strategy to focus on isolation, structural elucidation and biological evaluation and use of modern mass spectrometry (MS) techniques to analyze plants from this region.
