Antioxidant Capacity and Phenolic Content of Some Nepalese Medicinal Plants.docVIP

American Journal of Plant Sciences, 2013, 4, 1660-1665 /10.4236/ajps.2013.48200 Published Online August 2013 (/journal/ajps) Antioxidant Capacity and Phenolic Content of Some Nepalese Medicinal Plants Bijaya Laxmi Maharjan , Bikash Baral 1 2 1 Natural Products Research Laboratory, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), Kathmandu, Nepal; Biotechnology 2 Laboratory, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), Kathmandu, Nepal. Email: utpalbodhi@, bikubaral@ Received May 1 , 2013; revised June 2 , 2013; accepted July 15 , 2013 st nd th Copyright ? 2013 Bijaya Laxmi Maharjan, Bikash Baral. 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 Antioxidant capacities and phenolic contents of medicinal plants namely Usnea longifolia, Cetraria nepalensis, Par- melia minarum, Everniastrum nepalense, Rhododendron anthopogon and Fritillaria delavayi were analyzed via Folin- Ciocaltau assay, Ferric reducing activity power assay and 2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl assay. All the tested plants depicted the antioxidant activity with variation in extent of activity among the plants. The FRAP (F-value: 387.4), DPPH (F-value: 89.684) and TPC (F-value: 559.163) values between the extracts showed the highly significant differ- ences (P 0.01). This study indicated the strong antioxidant potential of R. anthopogon among the plants tested. Keywords: DPPH; FRAP; Fritillaria; Lichens; Phytochemicals; Rhododendron; TPC 1. Introduction free radical, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl free radical and singlet oxygen) and protecting from oxidative dam- age [5], finally being an important tools in obtaining an