The fruit peel serves as a barrier to counteract the attack of pathogenic organisms. Additionally to the physical defense exerted by peel, a diversity of chemicals compound is synthesized in this tissue that serves to inhibit the proliferation of the pathogenic organisms. The polyphenols take part of this chemical mechanism. In this regard, it has been widely demonstrated that some polyphenols (e.g. resveratrol) exert toxic properties toward cells. Thereby, the aim of this work was to investigate the toxic properties of polyphenols extracted from the peel of Punica granatum (pomegranate). First, we extracted the active compounds from pomegranate peel using four different solvents. Then, to determinate total phenols, we used Folin-Ciocalteau method, and we found that when we used 80% methanol plus 20% water (solvent A) as a solvent, we extracted the higher amount of polyphenols (26.46 mg EAG/100 mg DE from the batch I and 14.18 EAG/100mg DE from batch II). Furthermore, we calculated total flavonoids using aluminum chloride, and we obtained with solvent A the higher concentration of flavonoids (35.30 µg EQ/100 mg DE from batch I and 26.99 µg EQ/100 mg DE from batch II). Besides, the higher antioxidant potential with ABTS+ and DPPH+ were obtained from extracts with 80% ethanol plus 20% acetone (solvent D) and solvent A, respectively. Finally, to corroborate the biological activity of our extracts we made antibiotic activity assays using Kirby-Bahuer method, for this purpose we used the microorganisms Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, in which we observed inhibition halos ranged from 1.5 and 2.0 cm with concentrated extracts, and with dry extracts ranged from 0.2 and 0.7 cm, respectively. Altogether, this data corroborates that the extracts from the pomegranate peel serve to inhibit the proliferation of bacterial cells.

Login to Download PDF

Please login with your Paper ID and password to access the full PDF.

🔑 Login to Download