A comparative study on foliage and peels of (white dragon fruit) regarding their antioxidant activity and phenolic content.

foliage is believed to contain antioxidants similar to its peel. Numerous studies have been conducted to determine the total phenolic content (TPC) and antioxidant activity on the pulps and peels; however, similar studies on its foliage have yet to be investigated. In this study, foliage and peels were extracted using two different solvents namely; chloroform and methanol through Folin-Ciocalteu method and Diphenyl-1-Ipicrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging assay for TPC and antioxidant activity, respectively. As for TPC, results revealed that the peels gave higher TPC in both methanol (48.15 mg GAE/100g extract) and chloroform (18.89 mg GAE/100g extract) extractions than foliage (30.3 mg GAE/100g extract and 5.92 mg GAE/100g extract, respectively). However, when a comparison was made between foliage and peels in terms of its scavenging effects in DPPH assay, the peels contained more antioxidants (18.71%) than foliage (38.3%) in the chloroform solvent extracts. This study shows that foliage has a similar antioxidant activity as its peels and is potentially a natural antioxidant in food applications.