Comparative study of antioxidant activity and phytochemical constituents in young leaves of Solanum nigrum and Anacardium occidentale / Nur Amirah Mat Zin

Herbal plants consist of many phytochemical constituents and each of them have potential in treating diseases and some of them have antioxidant compound. Solanum nigrum and Anacardium occidentale are common herbal plants in Malaysia which can be found wildly grown and also were sold in daily markets. The aims of this study were to screen the phytochemical constituents of leaves extracts of Solanum nigrum and Anacardium occidentale, to determine and compare antioxidant capacity of both leaves extracts using DPPH scavenging method and to detect the presence of phenolic and flavonoid contents in both plants extracts by using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). Different solvents with different polarities of hexane, chloroform and methanol were used to extract phytochemical constituents from plants by using sequential extraction method. The study conducted to extract six different of plants crude extracts which were hexane extract, chloroform extract, methanol extract of Solanum nigrum and Anacardium occidentale respectively. Phytochemical screening of Solanum nigrum and Anacardium occidentale revealed that alkaloids, tannins, phenols and terpenoids were present in young leaves of Solanum nigrum while for young leaves of Anacardium occidentale revealed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, saponins, steroids, tannins, phenols and terpenoids. The antioxidant activities of the extracts were obtained by reading of absorbance using spectrophotometer. For HPLC, result was evaluated based on retention time of chromatogram. Anacardium occidentale shows 39.13% inhibition of DPPH radical yield in antioxidant activity while Solanum nigrum showed 32.22% of inhibition of DPPH. Both plants were unable to produce peak that represent same compounds like standard due to incomparable peaks. This study confirms the presence of various phytochemical constituents and both plants are potential antioxidant agents.