Our research involves the biochemical study of home-grown plants of South Texas along the Texas-Mexico border, which are used as folk remedies in the treatment of diabetes. One of the commonly used plants is Moringa oleifera. The ingestion this plant infusions has been claimed by diabetics to lower sugar levels in the blood and to alleviate the symptoms associated with this illness. It is commonly believed that Moringa seeds have better anti-diabetic properties than the moringa leaves, therefore, we have analyzed extracts from both seeds and leaves in order to compare the total antioxidant capacity, total phenols, ascorbic acid, total carotenoids, and vitamin E content of each. We have carried out the detection of total phenols using the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent. The Total anti-oxidant capacity (TAOC) was determined using the FRAP (Ferric reducing antioxidant power) assay. The determination of ascorbic acid was done by using meta-phosphoric acid and 2, 4-dinitrophenylhydrazine. Our experimental results show that the antioxidant levels of the moringa leaves are higher than that of the fermented seeds. Further experiments involve the development of RP-HPLC methods for the identification of flavonoids and phenols in fermented seeds, so that we can quantitatively compare these results to those previously obtained from the RP-HPLC analysis of leaves extracts.

Determination and comparison of antioxidant levels in Moringa oleifera leaves and fermented seeds

2019 Spring National Meeting

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