Antioxidant activity and phenolic profile of four Saudi Arabia date palms (Phoenix dactylifera L.) varieties

Antioxidants as free radical scavengers can combat the oxidative stress that occurs in the body to prevent chronic diseases. Therefore, antioxidant rich foods have a high demand among the healthcare consumers to maintain healthy lifestyle. One of the most potential fruit that are expected to contain high antioxidant compound is Phoenix dactylifera that have a lot of varieties. This study was intended to investigate the total phenolic content, antioxidant activity and phenolic profiles of four varieties of P. dactylifera (Khudori, Sabaka, Nabtat Ali and Soukari). The fleshes of the fruit were extracted using ethanol as the solvent using soxhlet. Total phenolic content (TPC) was measured by using Folin-Ciocalteu calorimetric method and the antioxidant activity was determined by using the 2,2,diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) method. Some phenolic acid and flavonoids profiles of the fruit (gallic acid, p-coumaric acid, ferulic acid and quercetin) were analyzed by using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). TPC of the fruit was in the range of 5.8 to 3.8 mg gallic acid equivalents (GAE) per 1 g of fruit with Soukari have the highest value. As for the antioxidant activity, Soukari need the lowest concentration (27.41 ± 1.68 mg/ml) to achieve half inhibition concentration (IC50 ) whereas Khudori need the highest concentration among the four. The HPLC result shows significantly higher amount of gallic acid (15.35 to 8.56 mg/g), and very small amount of ferulic acid (0.19 to 0.006 mg/g) where Soukari have the highest value for all of the compounds. This study demonstrates Soukari variety might possessed the highest antioxidant capacities among the four. Further study by using advanced and green extraction method need to be carried out to comprehend and confirm the potential of this fruit to be developed as nutraceutical and functional food. Keywords: Pheonix dactylifera, Antioxidant, Phenolic profile, HPLC

Antibacterial activity of compounds from Azolla pinnata extracted using Soxhlet and Supercritical Fluid (SFE) methods

The propagation, extraction, and antibacterial studies of Azolla pinnata were carried out in this study. The propagation involved two fertilizers, which were chicken manure and inorganic AB fertilizer. The dry yield was extracted using two methods, which were Soxhlet and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). Methanolic extracts were obtained and subjected to several antibacterial tests, which include the disk diffusion assay, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) tests, against Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The results showed that AB fertilizer produced more dry yield compared to chicken manure. The extract yield from Soxhlet exhibited a higher yield than that of SFE, recording its highest at 21.20%. The findings of antibacterial tests revealed that all extracts inhibited the growth of B. subtilis and S. aureus, but none showed inhibition against E. coli and P. aeruginosa. The largest diameter of inhibition zone of 2.67 ± 1.53 mm was obtained by E2 (CM-SFE), with a MIC value of 0.125 mg/mL against B. subtilis. High MBC values further confirm that the mechanism of inhibition against B. subtilis and S. aureus were due to the bacteriostatic properties of the extracts tested

Clinacanthus nutans: A review of the medicinal uses, pharmacology and phytochemistry

AbstractClinacanthus nutans Lindau is known as snake grass belonging to the Acanthaceae family. This plant has diverse and potential medicinal uses in traditional herbal medicine for treating skin rashes, insects and snake bites, lesions caused by herpes simplex virus, diabetes, and gout in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and China. Phytochemical investigations documented the varied contents of bioactive compounds from this plant namely flavonoids, glycosides, glycoglycerolipids, cerebrosides and monoacylmonogalatosylglycerol. The pharmacological experiment proved that various types of extracts and pure compounds from this species exhibited a broad range of biological properties such as anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antioxidant, and anti-diabetic activities. The findings of toxicity study showed that extracts from this plant did not show any toxicity thus it can be used as strong therapeutic agents for specific diseased conditions. However, further experiments on chemical components and their mode of action showing biological activities are required to elucidate the complete phytochemical profile and assess to confirm their suitability for future drugs. This review summarizes the medicinal uses, phytochemistry and pharmacology of this plant in order to explore its therapeutic potential and gaps necessitating for prospected research work

Extraction of fish oil from the skin of Indian mackerel using supercritical fluids.

The total oil was extracted from the ground skin of Indian mackerel (Rastrelliger kanagurta) using various techniques of supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) at 20–35 MPa and 45–75 °C and by the Soxhlet method for comparison. The oil yield increased with pressure and temperature and the highest yields were 24.7, 53.2, 52.8, and 52.3/100 g sample (dry basis) for the continuous, cosolvent, soaking, and pressure swing techniques, respectively, at 35 MPa and 75 °C. The yield from the Soxhlet extraction was 53.6/100 g sample (dry basis). The CO2 consumption was 581.8, 493.6, 484.9 and 290.9 g for the continuous, cosolvent, soaking and pressure swing techniques, respectively, at 35 MPa and 75 °C. The largest recoveries of PUFA, especially the ω-3 family, were achieved from the soaking and pressure swing techniques at 35 MPa and 75 °C. Thus, the pressure swing and soaking techniques are the most effective at extracting the oil from fish skin

Stereospermum fimbriatum as a potential source of phytochemicals: a review of stereospermum genus

Stereospermum fimbriatum is one of the medicinal plants that has been claimed to be used traditionally to treat several illnesses such as stomachache, ear-ache, skin irritation and postpartum illness. The genus of this plant is known to pos-sess medicinal properties in every part of the plant. Therapeutic potential of S. fim-briatum is anticipated based on numerous previous studies that documented variety of phytochemical contents and bioactivity of the genus. The most reported bioactiv-ities of its genus are antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory, anti-diarrheal and analgesic activities. S. fimbriatum is a rare species that has not been discovered yet. Thus, this review aims at highlighting the potentials of S. fim-briatum by collecting available data on the bioactivities of its genus and set the di-rections for future research on this plant

Mimosa pudica L.: a comparative study via in vitro analysis and GC Q-TOF MS profiling on conventional and supercritical fluid extraction using food grade ethanol

The present study compared conventional (maceration) extraction (EtOHconv) and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) methods as a mean of comparing conventional and green process for a weed namely Mimosa pudica L. to obtain a safe antidiabetic natural agent. In vitro analysis comprised of two different assays, antioxidant assay (determination of total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, and 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl assay) and antidiabetic assay (inhibition of αamylase and α-glucosidase). GC Q-TOF MS profiling for both extracts was done after derivetisation to confirm the presence of bioactive compounds. SFE was performed at 40 MPa pressure, 60 °C temperature and 5 mL/min CO2 flow rate using 30 % ethanol (co-solvent) for 2 h. EtOHconv prepared using 95 % ethanol through conventional method (maceration) showed a good in vitro antioxidant potential and digestive enzymes inhibitory effect compared to supercritical fluid extract. α-amylase and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities for EtOHconv at 1 mg/mL were 30.08 % (±5.23) and 38.29 % (±2.52), whereas for standard acarbose it was 28.24 % (±13.66) and 36.93 % (±2.70), respectively. Supercritical fluid extract showed less potent in vitro antioxidant and digestive enzymes inhibitory effects (15.67±4.03- α-amylase, 28.36±2.01- α-glucosidase). GC Q-TOF MS analysis was done to confirm the presence of bioactive compounds in both the extracts. Although EtOHconv showed better results, SFE was found to contain more bioactive compounds associated with various pharmacological effects especially antioxidative as per GC Q-TOF MS results. SFE being a clean and green technology could be employed in future with more focus on method development and optimization to reproduce better and safe bioactive products from the neglected weed M. pudica

Experimental design of supercritical fluid extraction: a review

Supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), a sustainable green technology leads a wide range of applications since the past decade. Like many other processes, SFE is sometimes criticized for its large number of factors which need to be properly adjusted before every single run. Experimental design and proper statistical analysis with small number of trials in adjusting the SFE parameters become popular in this regard. This paper is aimed to review the common experimental designs that are frequently used in the SFE process. Utilizations of different experimental designs in SFE with the intention of either screening the most influential factors or optimizing the selected factors are briefly reviewed. Strategies and recommendation addressing the choice of appropriate design, constructing design matrix, experimental trial and data analysis are discussed in this paper. For more application oriented readers of SFE, an effective and easy chart on choosing proper experimental design and a list of experimental design software are also included