Mast Ram Dhiman , Sandeep Kumar , Chander Parkash , Raj Kumar , Siddharth Moudgil , Sunita Sharma

ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Regional Station, Katrain, Kullu-Valley- 175129, HP, India
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Horticulture, 2017, Vol. 7, No. 4   doi: 10.5376/ijh.2017.07.0004
Received: 19 Nov., 2016    Accepted: 25 Jan., 2017    Published: 27 Feb., 2017

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Dhiman M.R., Kumar S., Parkash C., Kumar R., Moudgil S., and Sharma S., 2017, Determination of phytochemical and antioxidant activities in edible flowers, International Journal of Horticulture, 7(4): 26-32 (doi: 10.5376/ijh.2017.07.0004)

In the present study, edible flower samples belonging to 14 different genera were evaluated by employing various in vitro antioxidant assay such as total antioxidant activity determination by CUPRAC and FRAP, total phenolic content and plant pigments viz. Lycopene and β-carotene to investigate  their antioxidant potential with specific Phytochemicals composition. The results showed that extracts Vinca Red flower exhibited highest antioxidant capacity viz. CUPRAC 32.33 µmol trolox/g followed by Vinca Pink 30.46 while, least was observed in Gomphrina 4.983 µmol while its counterpart FRAP was highest (2.07 µmol /g) in poppy as well as in Vinca pink and least (0.22) in wild salvia. The total phenolic content (TPC) was found to be highest in Pusa Narangi (2282.54 µg GAE/gfw). A negative correlation was found between phenols and three carotenes. β- Carotene was found to have negative correlation with the three antioxidant factors (CUPRAC, FRAP and Phenols) while lycopene and total caroteniods showed a positive correlation with CUPRAC and FRAP. The results revealed the presence of antioxidants, phenols and caroteniods in most of the flowers confirming flowers as a potential source of these phytonutrient.

Edible flowers; Phytochemicals; Antioxidant; Phenols; Lycopene; Carotene