The evaluation of antioxidant capacity of propolis originating from western Romania

Abstract

The propolis, a resinous material produced by bees, was used from ancient times as a general panacea. The main active compounds known in propolis are the phenolic acids and flavonoids from the main class of polyphenols. This paper presents the flavonoid and phenolic acids contents evaluation by spectral (UV-Vis) methods of some propolis samples originating from two region located in the West (4 samples) and Northwest (3 samples) of Romania. The total flavonoid content expressed in chrysin ranges from 2.06 to 6.88 % respectively the total phenolic acids content expressed in caffeic acid from 0.30 to 0.72 %. It was evaluated the antioxidant capacity by DPPH, TEAC, FRAP, CUPRAC and silver nanoparticle (SNPAC) methods. All studied samples have shown important antioxidant capacity, an effect that could not be directly correlated with the polyphenols content, but exist a similar correlation trend at the studied samples.