Antioxidant Activities and Caffeic Acid Content in New Zealand Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) Roots Extracts

Abbey Symes; Amin Shavandi; Hongxia Zhang; Isam A Mohamed Ahmed; Fahad Y Al-Juhaimi; Alaa El-Din Ahmed Bekhit

doi:10.3390/antiox7040052

Antioxidant Activities and Caffeic Acid Content in New Zealand Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) Roots Extracts

Antioxidants (Basel). 2018 Apr 4;7(4):52. doi: 10.3390/antiox7040052.

Authors

Abbey Symes¹, Amin Shavandi², Hongxia Zhang³, Isam A Mohamed Ahmed⁴, Fahad Y Al-Juhaimi⁵, Alaa El-Din Ahmed Bekhit⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Food Science, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand. abbeysymes77@gmail.com.
² Department of Food Science, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand. amin.shavandi@otago.ac.nz.
³ Department of Food Science, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand. hongxia.zhang@postgrad.otago.ac.nz.
⁴ Department of Food Science and Nutrition, College of Food and Agricultural Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia. isamnawa@yahoo.com.
⁵ Department of Food Science and Nutrition, College of Food and Agricultural Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia. faljuhaimi@ksu.edu.sa.
⁶ Department of Food Science, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand. aladin.bekhit@otago.ac.nz.

Abstract

Asparagus officinalis are perennial plants that require re-planting every 10–20 years. The roots are traditionally mulched in the soil or treated as waste. The A. officinalis roots (AR) contain valuable bioactive compounds that may have some health benefiting properties. The aim of this study was to investigate the total polyphenol and flavonoid contents (TPC and TFC, respectively) and antioxidant (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) and Ferric Reducing/Antioxidant Power (FRAP) assays) activities of New Zealand AR extract. The antioxidant activity decreased with a longer extraction time.

Keywords: antioxidant activity; asparagus roots; bioactive compounds.