Investigations on the antioxidant activity of fruit and vegetable aqueous extracts on superoxide radical anion using chemiluminescence techniques

A sensitive and simple method for measuring antioxidant activity was developed, based on antioxidant-dependant quenching of the chemiluminescence (CL) generated from 9-benzylacridine and potassium superoxide. This method was used to evaluate the antioxidant activity of fruit and vegetable aqueous extracts as well as of some pure phenolic compounds contained in fruits and vegetables. Coumaric, chlorogenic, caffeic, vanillic and ascorbic acids as well as (±)catechin, and 2-hydroxy-2,5,7,8-tetramethylchroman-2-carboxylic acid (trolox) were employed as antioxidants. It was found that the antioxidant activity of all fruit extracts is almost one order of magnitude higher than that of vegetables. Among the fruits, grapefruits show the highest antioxidant activity and pears the lowest. From the pure phenolic antioxidants, caffeic acid has the highest antioxidant activity (AA). The calculated antioxidant activities of fruit and vegetable extracts produced by the CL method are compared with other methods such as the ORAC, TEAC or DPPH method.