Chemical Composition, Total Phenolic Content, and Antioxidant Activities of the Essential Oils of the Leaves and Fruit Pulp of Annona muricata L. (Soursop) from Ghana.

Joseph Nana Gyesi,Rita Opoku,Lawrence Sheringham Borquaye

doi:10.1155/2019/4164576

Abstract

Annona muricata, also called soursop, is widespread in many tropical countries, and various parts of the plant have been shown to possess very good pharmacological properties. This work evaluated the chemical composition and antioxidant activities of essential oils obtained from the fruit pulp and leaves of soursop. Essential oils were obtained via hydrodistillation and characterized by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Antioxidant potential was evaluated via the phosphomolybdenum, hydrogen peroxide scavenging, and 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging assays. In the leaf essential oil, a total of 31 compounds were identified with δ-cadinene (22.58%) and α-muurolene (10.64%) being the most abundant. Thirty-two compounds were identified in the fruit pulp essential oil with Ç-sitosterol (19.82%) and 2-hydroxy-1-(hydroxymethyl) ethyl ester (13.48%) being present in high amounts. Both essential oils showed very good total antioxidant capacities (49.03 gAAE/100 g and 50.88 gAAE/100 g for fruit pulp and leaf essential oils, respectively). The IC50 values from the DPPH assay were 244.8 ± 3.2 μg/mL for leaf essential oil and 512 ± 5.1 μg/mL for the fruit pulp essential oil. At 1 mg/mL, hydrogen peroxide scavenged was below 50% for both leaf and fruit pulp essential oils, indicating moderate activity. These results suggest possible application of the essential oils of Annona muricata in food preservation and processing.

Highlights

Antioxidants have garnered a lot of attention in recent times due to their potential in the prevention and treatment of radical-mediated diseases
Isolation of Volatile Compounds. e pulp of the fresh fruit was separated from the peel and seed and 680 g of the pulp placed in a hydrodistillation apparatus. e setup for hydrodistillation consisted of a modified Clavenger glassware, a condenser, a round bottom flask, a heating mantle, and a receiving flask as described elsewhere
All chemicals used for the antioxidant activity evaluations were obtained from Sigma-Aldrich

Summary

Introduction

Antioxidants have garnered a lot of attention in recent times due to their potential in the prevention and treatment of radical-mediated diseases. E use of essential oils for their beneficial human properties has been in existence since antiquity and is documented in primordial literature [16, 17] Some of these properties of essential oils such as anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antioxidant have been verified in the recent scientific literature [14, 18,19,20]. Essential oils have been isolated from different organs of the plant such as fruit pulp, leaves, and fruit peel as well as plants from different locations in Africa, Asia, and the Americas [25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37]. E present work describes the composition of essential oils from the leaves and fruit pulp of Ghanaian cultivars of Annona muricata. The antioxidant activities of the essential oils were evaluated

Methods

Conclusion

Conflicts of Interest