Total flavonoids and antioxidant activity of an artichoke population submitted to three cycles of phenotypic recurrent selection

REOLON-COSTA, A.; GRANDO, M.F.; DE NARDI, F. S.; CALVETE, E.; CRAVERO, V.P.

La Plata

Simposio; IX International Symposium on Artichoke, Cardoon and their wild relatives; 2015

ISHS

Artichoke is considered a functional food due to its nutritional and medicinal properties. This crop is rich in healthy compounds such as phenols, which have antioxidant activity. The aim of this work was to determine total phenol and antioxidant activity in a population submitted to distinct cycles of phenotypic recurrent selection and verifies modification in these concentrations during the selection processes. For this, 20 leaves of different plants, in each cycle of phenotypic recurrent selection (C0, C1 and C2), were dried in room temperature (25 and 30 ºC) and grinded. The extracts were prepared by infusion. Both parameters were made in triplicates and absorbance values compared with a gallic acid calibration curve. The data were submitted to variance analysis (ANOVA) and means were compared by Tukey's test, 5% error probability. There were significant variation among the cycles in the total phenol content and antioxidant activity what indicates an improvement in the chemical properties of artichoke leaves. A linear reduction was observed in the total phenols content with the progress of the phenotypic recurrent selection. The cycle C0 (377,68 mg L-1) presented higher values than Cycle C1 (292,81 mg L-1) which in turn was better than cycle C2 (266,33 mg L-1). Reduction power, or antioxidant capacity, also reduced during the cycles, however, cycle C0 differ from cycle C2, which obtained lower reduction power 113,59 mg L-1. Therefore, artichoke total phenol content and antioxidant capacity reduced during the three cycles of the phenotypic recurrent selection and the improvement scheme used influenced on the leaves chemical properties, even these parameters not being objects of selection.