Abstract
Increased public awareness of healthy foods and healthy living, coupled with escalating medicinal costs and recent advances in research and technology, has sparked a paradigm shift to nutraceuticals, which guarantee human health and disease prevention. Spider plant (Gynandropsis gynandra) contains dietary phytochemicals with high nutritional and medicinal properties that can contribute to healthy living. A study was conducted to identify spider plant (Gynandropsis gynandra(L.) Briq.) accessions with superior levels of dietary phytochemicals and anti-oxidative activity for use in nutraceutical breeding. Thirty-three accessions of spider plant, representing a wide genetic diversity based on geographic areas of origin (Asia, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa), were used. Total phenolic acids, tannins, and anthocyanins were extracted and quantified using the Folin-Ciocalteau colorimetric, spectrophotometric, and pH differential methods, respectively. Antioxidant activity was determined using phosphomolybdenum method. Results showed significant variation in levels of total phenolic compounds, tannins, anthocyanins, and antioxidant activity (P< 0.05) amongst the spider plant accessions and regions of origin; ODS-15-037 (464 mg TAE/g DW), ODS-15-053 (270 mg GAE/g DW), and BC-02A (127 mg cyanidin-3-glucoside/g DW) had the highest levels of total tannins, phenolic compounds, and anthocyanins, respectively. Antioxidant activity was high in ODS-15-053 (492.2 mg AAE/100 g DW), NAM 2232 (445.3 mg AAE/100 g DW), and NAM-6 (432.5 mg AAE/100 g DW). On average, West African accessions had significantly high tannin concentrations (239 mg TAE/g DW), while Southern Africa accessions contained significantly high anthocyanin content (58.9 mg cyanidin-3-glucoside/g DW). The superior accessions are potential candidates for use in nutraceutical breeding, while the regions of origin could be used as gene pools for specific phytochemicals for improving dietary supplements of nutraceuticals. The strong antioxidant activity exhibited by spider plant accessions suggests the presence of compounds responsible for scavenging free oxygen or nitrogen radicals. Further studies are recommended to identify the chromosomal regions that contain genes controlling the dietary nutraceuticals in the genetic materials and to determine their association with foliage yield and other phenotypes, which can be utilized in spider plant improvement.
Highlights
Global economic development continues to influence the changes in disposable incomes, spending levels, and quality of lifestyle associated with major diseases related to nutritional deficiencies (Pandey et al, 2010)
This study showed the diversity of Total Phenolic Content (TPC) across accessions (66.0 to 270.0 mg gallic acid equivalent (GAE)/g) and regions (108.9 to 140.8 mg GAE/g), suggesting both genetic and environmental effects on TPC
Results from this study have revealed that G. gynandra accessions contain high levels of dietary phytochemicals, which account for their strong antioxidant ability
Summary
Global economic development continues to influence the changes in disposable incomes, spending levels, and quality of lifestyle associated with major diseases related to nutritional deficiencies (Pandey et al, 2010). Increased public awareness regarding healthy eating and living, escalating medical costs, and recent advances in research and technology have ignited a paradigm shift to nutraceuticals (Das et al, 2012), promising good health and disease prevention. The nutraceuticals, such as vitamins, minerals, and phenolics, reduce the risk of chronic diseases by scavenging reactive oxygen and nitrogen species in the human body (Zhang et al, 2015; Sarker and Oba, 2018d) and are referred to as antioxidants (Sarker et al, 2018b). The spider plant (Gynandropsis gynandra (L.) Briq.; family—Cleomaceae), a semi-wild indigenous vegetable species in sub-Saharan Africa (Shilla et al, 2019), has gained recent attention due to the presence of high levels of secondary metabolites which contribute to strong antioxidant properties (Sowinmi and Afolayan, 2015), and chosen for this investigation
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