Radical Scavenging Ability and Biochemical Screening of a Common Asian Vegetable - Raphanus sativus L.

Abstract

Raphanus sativus L. commonly known as muli, belongs to the family Brassicaceae. Production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) causes various diseases and cellular anomalies in human beings. Antioxidants inhibit generation of reactive species, or scavenge them, or raise the levels of endogenous antioxidant defenses. In this study the radical scavenging ability as well as biochemical analysis of different extracts of Raphanus sativus L. was undertaken. Results revealed that the leaf of Raphanus sativus L. has potent antioxidant ability of 78.17% at 200µg/ml concentration and IC50 value at 122.33µg/ml concentration while its roots showed maximum % inhibition of 58.38% at 200µg/ml aqueous extract with IC50 value at 166.79µg/ml concentration. A good correlation was found to exist between concentration of extract and % inhibition with R 2 value of 0.999 for leaf extract and 0.967 for its root extract. Phytochemical analysis of its leaf extract revealed the presence of photosynthetic pigments (3.40 mg/g fresh weight), ascorbic acid (0.000429 mg/g fresh weight) and foliar phenol content (0.0270 mg/g fresh weight), along with the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, glycosides, tannin, phenolic compounds, triterpenoids and steroids. While root extract also showed photosynthetic pigments (0.38mg/g fresh weight), ascorbic acid (0.0000825mg/g fresh weight) and foliar phenol (0.0375mg/g fresh weight) along with the presence of alkaloids, glycosides, triterpenoids and steroids but carbohydrates, reducing sugars, flavonoids, tannin, phenolic compounds, saponin, proteins and amino acids were found to be absent. In this study the leaf extract was found to be more potent antioxidant as compared to the root.