Abstract
Flowers and vegetative parts of wild Taraxacum identified as belonging to sect. Ruderalia were chemically characterized in nutritional composition, sugars, organic acids, fatty acids and tocopherols. Furthermore, the antioxidant potential and phenolic profiles were evaluated in the methanolic extracts, infusions and decoctions. The flowers gave higher content of sugars, tocopherols and flavonoids (mainly luteolin O-hexoside and luteolin), while the vegetative parts showed higher content of proteins and ash, organic acids, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and phenolic acids (caffeic acid derivatives and especially chicoric acid). In general, vegetative parts gave also higher antioxidant activity, which could be related to the higher content in phenolic acids (R2=0.9964, 0.8444, 0.4969 and 0.5542 for 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl, reducing power, β-carotene bleaching inhibition and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances assays, respectively). Data obtained demonstrated that wild plants like Taraxacum, although not being a common nutritional reference, can be used in an alimentary base as a source of bioactive compounds, namely antioxidants.
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