Antioxidant activity and phytochemistry of various flowers from Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

It is a known fact that plants are widely used in pharmaceutical and food industries due to their biological importance. Among the plant parts, leaves, stems, roots and bark are being widely studied for their biological properties. However, flowers are almost neglected and are not much probed for their importance. In this study, the methanolic and aqueous extracts of 25 commonly available flowers belonging to 16 different families from the state of Tamil Nadu are probed for their antioxidant property and their phytochemical constituents respectively. Methanolic crude extracts of the flowers at the concentrations of 200, 400, 600, 800 and 1000µg/ml were studied against DPPH to know their antioxidant potential. The presence or absence of phytochemicals like cardiac glycosides, flavonoids, phlobatannins, saponins, steroids, tannins and terpenoids was detected. The flowers of Couroupita guianensis and Gerbera sp. recorded EC₅₀ values of <200 µg/ml. However, the flower of Gomphrena globosa has not recorded any value even at the concentration of 1000 µg/ml. Among the phytochemicals, flavonoid was recorded from almost all the floral extracts except that of Gomphrena globosa. Phlobatannins and Steroids were not recorded in any of the floral extracts studied. As few flowers showed the presence of either flavonoid and tannin or flavonoid and saponin, they may better exploited for pharmaceutical and nutraceutical applications.