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Food and Nutrition Sciences, 2013, 4, 918-923 /10.4236/fns.2013.49119 Published Online September 2013 (/journal/fns) Antioxidant Activity in in Vivo and in Vitro Cultures of Onion Varieties (Bellary and CO 3) Malla Ashwini, Janakiraman Balaganesh, Srinivasan Balamurugan, Shanmugaraj Bala Murugan, Ramalingam Sathishkumar * Plant Genetic Engineering Laboratory, Department of Biotechnology, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, India. * Email: rsathish@.in Received May 17 , 2013; revised June 17 , 2013; accepted June 24 , 2013 th th th Copyright ? 2013 Malla Ashwini et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT The aim of the study was to evaluate the phytochemical components and antioxidant potential of methanolic and hy- drophilic extracts isolated from in vivo and in vitro cultures of onion varieties of Bellary and CO 3. Phytochemical components like total flavonoids, phenolics, ascorbic acid and anthocyanins were analyzed. The antioxidant activities were examined by DPPH and FRAP methods. The results indicated that the both the methanolic extracts exhibited radical scavenging activity. The DPPH scavenging activity in Bellary and CO 3 onion varieties ranged from 6.5% - 11.8% whereas FRAP values ranged from 0.9 - 3.3 μM/100 μg FW. The total anthocyanins ranged from 9.9 - 29.9 mg/kg, vitamin-C 48.6 - 78.6 mg/kg, total phenolics and flavonoids content was 15.7 - 34.7 mg/g GAE and 0.65 - 1.17 mg/g respectively. Substantial amounts of anthocyanins, phenols, flavonoids and ascorbic acid were noticed in both the varieties. Our study revealed that the possible mechanism of the biological activities in onion could be d