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

• Main Authors: Hamzah, Nurfatin Nazirah, Ferdosh, Sahena, Sarker, Md. Zaidul Islam
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Q Science (General)
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/55584/2/55584.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/55584/

Antioxidant is the compound that inhibits oxidation or chain reactions caused by free radicals. Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is among the antioxidant rich fruit that have hundreds varieties around the globe with different composition. This study was intended to investigate the four varieties of Saudi Arabia date (Khudori, Sabaka, Nabtat Ali and Soukari) that has highest antioxidants and phenolic compound to be potentially developed as nutraceutical and functional food. The fleshes of the fruit were extracted using soxhlet extraction with ethanol as the solvent. Total phenolic content (TPC) of the four selected varieties of Saudi Arabia date were measured by using the Folin–Ciocalteu calorimetric method. Some phenolic acid and flavonoids profiles of the date varieties, (gallic acid, p-coumaric acid, ferulic acid and quercetin) were analyzed by using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). All four varieties of the dates showed positive phytochemical screening result for the present of flavonoid, terpenoid and saponin. The total phenolic content of the date was in the range of 8.84 to 4.43 mg gallic acid equivalents (GAE) per 100g of fruit with soukari have the highest value. The HPLC result shows the phenolic profile of the varieties were found to contain significantly higher amount of Gallic acid (15.35 to 8.56 mg/g), p-coumaric (2.84 to 1.61 mg/g), quercetin (4.12 to 1.07 mg/g) and very small amount of ferulic acid (0.19 to 0.006 mg/g) with soukari have the highest value for all of the compounds. This study demonstrates Soukari variety possessed the strongest antioxidant capacities and highest phenolic profile content among the four.