Studying the Antioxidant Activity of Moringa Leaf Extracts (Moringa oleifera Lam.)

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this research was to estimate the antioxidants present in the locally grown Moringa leaves powder (Moringa oleifera Lam. ), and the antioxidant activities were measured using three different assays (DPPH free radical scavenging, reductive strength, and ferrous ion binding). The percentage of DPPH increased with the concentration of the additional extracts, reaching a maximum of 63.14 percent at a concentration of 2 percent, and then 73.49 percent for the alcoholic extract, 68.87 percent for the aqueous extract, and 68.5 percent for the industrial antioxidant BHT. The lowest efficacy for inhibiting free radicals was 20.15%, 32.64% and 36.43% for each of the aqueous and alcoholic extracts and the synthetic antioxidant BHT respectively. The alcoholic extract outperformed the aqueous extract and BHT in the reductive strength test and reached 90.12%, while the aqueous extract and BHT reached 57.71% and 84.46%, respectively. As for the percentage of the ability to bind the ferrous ion of the extracts compared with BHT the alcoholic extract was superior to both the aqueous extract and BHT and reached 88.2% at a concentration of 10 mg / ml, while it reached 80.5 and 76.9% for each of the aqueous extract and BHT respectively, at the same concentration. The study showed the importance of using Moringa leaf extracts as an alternative antioxidant to industrial antioxidants with high efficiency to improve the quality of the food product.