Capacidade antioxidante de farinhas de resíduos de frutas tropicais

Abstract

Economically advantageous alternatives to fully explore the antioxidant content of tropical fruit residues from juice processor industries have been currently studied in the State of Alagoas, Brazil. Thus, flour methanolic extracts of acerola (AC), passion fruit (PF) and pineapple (PA) residues were screened for their antioxidant capacity. For this, their total phenolic content, antioxidant capacity toward DPPH and toward the superoxide anion radical, together with analysis of their protective effect against membrane lipid peroxidation, caused by peroxyl radical, were determined in the flour methanolic extracts. In the last case, the phospholipid bilayer biomimetic model with the inclusion of a fluorescent probe was used. The statistical analysis employed the epi info version 6.04d (2001) program and Microsoft excel, using the test t, multivaried analysis and qui-square, considering p < 0.05 as significant. The results of total phenolic content of flour methanolic extracts of AC, PF and PA were 94.6 ± 7.4, 41.2 ± 4.2 and 9.1 ± 1.3 mg of gallic acid equivalents/ g of dry extract, respectively. AC showed the best total phenolic content and antioxidant capacity toward DPPH . PF showed the best antioxidant capacity to superoxide anion radical. Similar indexes of lipid peroxidation protection were observed with both AC and PF residues. Altogether, these data suggest that flour methanolic extracts of AC and PF residues may be useful as antioxidant supplements or food additives, notably the acerola (AC) extracts.