Water soluble phenolics, flavonoids and anthocyanins extracted from jaboticaba berries using maceration with ultrasonic pretreatment

Abstract

Jaboticaba is healthy and delicious berries rich in phenolic compounds, particularly flavonoids, anthocyanins and ellagitannins. The natural occurring polyphenols have been getting interested by food and pharmaceutical industries, mainly due to their remarkable pharmacological actions. Therefore, this study was focused on the extraction of water soluble phenolics from jaboticaba berries using maceration technique with and without ultrasonic pretreatment. A short period of ultrasonic treatment (30 min) prior to maceration could improve the extraction to recover total phenolic and anthocyanin content, especially from its thick fruit peel for 75% and 61%, respectively. About 4.5% - 8.5% and 8.6% - 9.4% of the total phenolics was flavonoids and anthocyanins, respectively. The phenolics were statistically correlated to different colorimetric antioxidant assays to postulate the plausible antioxidant pathway. Hierarchical clustering revealed that phenolics in jaboticaba extracts were the dominant scavengers against free, cationic and peroxyl radicals, specifically flavonoids and anthocyanins were likely to be reducing agents. Jaboticaba extracts were also found to have higher scavenging capacity against peroxyl radicals, and higher reducing power than that of Trolox. Mass screening by UPLC-MS/MS detected many phenolics including glycosylated cyanidins and delphinidins, as well as galloylated flavonoids, ellagitannins and phospholipids in the peel extract.