Total flavonoid, phenolic and antioxidant activities of Pelargonium quercetorum Agnew: Comparison of in vivo and in vitro grown plant

English (OpenAlex)

Nowadays, natural compounds with phytochemical properties are considered human-friendly drugs because they do not have side effects. Therefore, the importance given to antioxidant compounds, which are also found in plants, continues to increase day by day. Pelargonium L'Hér. ex Aiton taxa are also used as curative in diseases such as respiratory tract infections, dysentery, liver complaints and diarrhea treatment. Plant tissue and cell culture techniques are a good tool for the production of some active metabolites such as polyphenols. It is also known that with these methods, secondary metabolite production is promoted and there are also changes in antioxidant capacity. In this context, it was aimed to determine the total phenolic, flavonoid and antioxidant capacities of Pelargonium quercetorum Agnew plant by growing in vivo (rhizome and above-ground part) and in vitro conditions. When the results obtained were examined, the highest phenolic and flavonoid content was found in the shoot extract in vitro; the lowest phenolic and flavonoid content was determined in the rhizome extract. In our study, 3 different methods (DPPH, ABTS, CUPRAC) were used to determine the total antioxidant activity. When the antioxidant activity results were evaluated in general, it was observed that the order of activity in all three methods was "in vitro shoot ˃ in vivo above ground ˃ in vivo rhizome". In the DPPH method, plant extracts showed better activity than BHT, which was used as a positive control, and better than BHA in the ABTS method. In addition, a positive correlation was observed between total phenolic-flavonoid content and antioxidant activity. The data obtained from this study, it is thought that the plant P. quercetorum has antioxidant activity, and our study will be a step in the search for natural origin antioxidants.