EVALUATION OF ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY AND MINERALS VALUE FROM WATERCRESS (Nasturtium officinale R.Br.)

摘要

Watercress (Nasturtium officinale R.Br.) is an annual plant from Brassicaceae family. It is easy to grown and often widely at a small river, pond, swamp and shallow lake. It is not only consumed as a vegetable but also used for the treatment of anticancer, antidiabetes, antiallergy and tuberculosis. From all of these health benefits, this study was carried on to evaluate exposed of antioxidant activity and minerals value as the pharmaceutical and nutritional sources. Antioxidant efficacy of various organic solvent extracts from watercress was evaluated by using DPPH free radical scavenging assay. Determination of minerals content was using the atomic absorption spectrophotometry assay. Methanolic extract of watercress showed the best antioxidant activity rather than ethyl acetate and hexane extracts. Watercress also contained a lot of minerals such as calcium, potassium, sodium and magnesium which are very important for human body. From this study, it could be concluded that watercress is a good promising pharmaceutical and nutritional sources.