Total Phenolics content and anti-oxidant potential of Ficus Deltoidea using green and non-green solvents

Abstract

Solvents play an important role in chemical or pharmaceutical industry. The usage of non-green solvent may cause detrimental effects to human safety and health. Therefore, green solvents are encouraged to be utilized because they are environmental friendly and easily acquired during the agricultural crops processing. For the present study, green and non-green solvents are used in the extraction of Ficus deltoidea’s leaves. The green solvent used was water whereas non-green solvents used were ethanol and methanol. The extracts were then investigated through total phenolics content (TPC) and antioxidant activity. Folin-Ciocalteu method was used in measuring the presence and amount of phenolic content in each of the sample. The results showed that aqueous extract had the highest TPC (368.42 ± 6.37 mg/g) and followed by methanolic (295.03 ± 16.65 mg/g) and ethanolic (263.45 ± 5.28 mg/g) extracts. Furthermore, 2,2- diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay is used in determining the antioxidant activity of the extracts. The lowest IC50 value based on the graph of percentage inhibition against concentration of sample was shown by ethanolic extract (16.5 μg/ml), followed by methanolic extract (22.0 μg/ml) and aqueous extract (23.5 μg/ml). For the three samples, the correlations between TPC and IC50 were negative and weak. Hence, the antioxidant activity of an extract cannot be predicted based on its total phenolics content. The present study had shown that F. deltoidea is considerably has the potential as sources of natural antioxidants.