Comparative Study on the Antioxidant Activities of Extracts from Piper Betle Leaves
Sujatha Venugopalan¹, Alka Sharma¹, Vijayalatha Venugopalan² and Hemant K. Gautam²¹Department of Food Technology, Guru Jambheshwar University, Hisar .
²Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Mall Road, Delhi.
Abstract: Betel (Piper betle) is widely grown in many parts of the Indian sub-continent and is used in several common household remedies. This study was aimed to evaluate the antioxidant activity of the extracts from leaves of Piper betle. The extracts of the betel leaves were prepared in water and organic solvents. The aqueous extracts were enzymatically hydrolyzed by two carbohydrate degrading enzyme (cellulase, diastase) and three protein degrading enzymes (trypsin, neutrase, alcalase) and potential antioxidant activities of the resultant aqueous extracts as well as the organic solvent extracts were evaluated using two different reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging assays viz. 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical assay and superoxide anion scavenging assay. The results showed that enzyme extracts as well as polar organic solvent extracts from betel leaves confirmed antioxidant activities comparable to their commercial counterparts such as BHA, BHT and á-tocopherol. Total phenolic content as well as the reducing power of the solvent extracts was found to associate with their antioxidant properties. As the organic solvent in food use may raise issues of safety, such extracts can be explored for potential non-food use. However, the enzyme extracts can be used as a potential water soluble antioxidant source in food industry.
Keywords: Piper betle; antioxidant activity; enzymatic extract Back to TOC