Phytochemical extraction and quantification from wild pomegranate flavedo powder, their antioxidant and antimicrobial properties
Hamid Hamid, Neeraj S. Thakur, Rakesh Sharma, Abhimanyu Thakur, Pradeep Kumar, Sunakshi Gautam
Abstract
In present study wild pomegranate flavedo powder (425 particle size) was used for the extraction of phenolics through various solvents by Soxhlet method. A significant difference in all parameters was observed among the different extracts with varying solvents and extraction time after oven drying of extracts. The highest total phenolics and flavonoids among different extracts after oven drying were recorded when ethanol was used as solvent after 6 h of extraction. To separate different treatments based on similarity, cluster analysis was applied based on Ward method and it showed that all treatments were divided in nine major groups and two major clusters. The two best selected extracts were further compared on the basis of total phenolics, flavonoids and various antioxidant properties after lyophilization. In conclusion, lyophilized ethanolic extract (4 h) contained higher total phenolics (174.62 GAE/g), flavonoids (8.90 QuE/g), DPPH free radical scavenging activity (88.12 %), ferric reducing antioxidant power (816.10 M Fe 2+ /100 g) and metal chelating activity (68.50 %). The selected lyophilized extract has also shown higher zone of inhibition against S. aureus and E. coli as 22.0 mm and 20.0 mm at 100 ppm concentration. Hence, fruit flavedo is rich source of total phenolics, total flavonoids and antioxidant activity which are beneficial natural antioxidants to health and have many health promoting properties which makes the flavedo suitable for future processing into various functional/nutraceutical foods.