Procyanidin concentrations and H-ORAC of apples cultivated in Japan

Abstract

Fruits are a major dietary source of phytochemicals with health benefits for humans. In particular, apples are an important source of dietary phytochemicals including procyanidins. Thus, in the present study, we investigated procyanidin concentrations in apples using normal-phase high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection and hydrophilic oxygen radical absorbance capacity (H-ORAC) values. Apple procyanidin concentrations were significantly correlated with H-ORAC values (r = 0.8284, P < 0.0001) in 30 varieties of apple cultivars (dessert, processing and crab apples). These data suggest that the anti-oxidative activity of apples is mainly due to procyanidins.