Mansour Afshar Mohammadian, Shirin Kordi,
Volume 5, Issue 4 (3-2019)
Abstract
Nowadays, the use of a wide range of medicinal herbs such as saffron and its aromatic compounds is increasingly being regarded as natural sources of antioxidant properties. In addition to saffron stigma, saffron petal is a rich herbal source of antioxidant compounds. The present study was conducted in a completely randomized design with three replications to study some of the enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants of two species of wild saffron in Guilan Province compared with agronomic saffron (C. sativus). The results of this study showed that total phenol, flavonoids and anthocyanins in agronomic saffron were significantly higher than those in the other two species. The amount of flavonel in C. speciosus and the level of antioxidant activity (DPPH) in C. caspius were significantly higher than other species. The level of PPO activity in C. sativus and C. speciosus was significantly higher than that in C. caspius. However, there was no significant difference in the level of POD activity among the three studied species. Therefore, according to the results of this study, petals of different species of saffron are good sources of non-enzymatic and enzymatic antioxidants and can be used as an available natural antioxidant in the food and pharmaceutical industries.
Dr Seyed Mehdi Razavi, Mrs Neda Delir, Dr Sareh Abrahimi, Dr Mansour Afshar Mohammadian,
Volume 11, Issue 2 (8-2024)
Abstract
Using the allelopathic property of some plant species is one of the proposed methods to reduce the use of chemical poisons. Anthriscus nemorosa is an aromatic plant belonging to the Apiaceae that grows naturally in the western and northern parts of in this study. Considering that so far the biochemical and allelopathic properties of this plant have not been investigated in Iran, in this study, the roots of this plant were collected from Khalkhal county and after drying in the shade, the essential oil was extracted by hydro-distillation. The essential oil was analyzed by GC and GC-MS. 52 compounds were identified from the essential oil, representing 80.21% of the total oil. The main constituents were Myristicin (16.92%), Heptane (12.98%), Elemicin (12.54%), Gamma-Terpinene (12.50%), Decane (3.08%), Beta-Eudesmol (2.95%) and Beta-phellandrene (2.52%) and these compounds were remarkably different with that of A. nemorosa native to Serbia. To investigate the allelopathic effects of this plant, an experimental design was factorial experiment in a completely randomized design with four replications. The results of examining the effects of n-hexane, dichloromethane and methanolic extracts (with concentrations of 0, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1 and 1 mg/ml) of the root of this plant on lettuce (Lactuca sativa L. var.capitata) showed that all three extracts had an inhibitory effect on the germination percentage (%), shootlet growth and rootlet growth of lettuce. However, the hexane extract in all treated concentrations had a more inhibitory effect on the germination and shootlet growth of lettuce seed.
