Studies on free radical Scavenging activity and total phenolic content of Foeniculum vulgare Mill. Yadav S.S.*, Sangwan Parul, Ganie S. A., Gulia S. S. Department of Botany, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak (Haryana) India 124001 *Corresponding Author E-mail: ssyadavindia@gmail.com
Online published on 10 August, 2020. Abstract The oxidative stress leads to the development of many chronic and degenerative diseases like cancer, autoimmune disorders, aging, cataract, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Available antioxidants are too costly and are beyond the reach of common people. Moreover, many synthetic antioxidants also have adverse side effects. Now-a-days, efforts are going on in many countries to search new antioxidant compounds. Foeniculum vulgare has been used in traditional medicines for the treatment of anaemia, dyspepsia, diarrhoea, diabetes and many cutaneous diseases. Further, reports are also available which demonstrated the role of F. vulgare seeds in minimising the effect of free radicals generated oxidative stress. Hence, the present study was conducted to investigate the free radicals scavenging activity of Foeniculum vulgare extracts and its correlation with phenolic contents. In this study, the in vitro antioxidant activity of methanolic and acetone F. vulgare seed extracts were investigated using 1,1-diphenyl-2-phenylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay. Total phenolic content was determined by Folin-Ciocalteu reagent method. Plant extracts showed considerable DPPH radical scavenging activity. The acetone extract had shown the better antioxidant activity (94.56%) as compared to methanolic extract (87.4%). Both the plant extracts demonstrated dose-dependent free radical scavenging activity but interestingly; methanolic extract had better phenolic content (64.4 mg TAE/g) than acetone extract (43.5 mg TAE/g). Inspite of high phenolic content methanolic extract does not show better antioxidant activity than acetone extract, suggesting that phenolics are not the only phytocompounds to confer antioxidant potency. Top Keywords Foeniculum vulgare, Anti-oxidant activity, Free radicals, Traditional Medicine. Top |