Chilean Prosopis Mesocarp Flour: Phenolic Profiling and Antioxidant Activity

Abstract

In South America, the mesocarp flour of Prosopis species plays a prominent role as a food resource in arid areas. The aim of this work was the characterization of the phenolic antioxidants occurring in the pod mesocarp flour of Chilean Prosopis. Samples were collected in the Copiapo, Huasco and Elqui valleys from the north of Chile. The samples of P. chilensis flour exhibited a total phenolic content ranging between 0.82–2.57 g gallic acid equivalents/100 g fresh flour weight. The highest antioxidant activity, measured by the DPPH assay, was observed for samples from the Huasco valley. HPLC-MS/MS analysis allowed the tentative identification of eight anthocyanins and 13 phenolic compounds including flavonol glycosides, C-glycosyl flavones and ellagic acid derivatives. The antioxidant activity and the phenolic composition in the flour suggest that this ancient South American resource may have potential as a functional food.

Flour from Prosopis alba cotyledons: A natural source of nutrient and bioactive phytochemicals

“…The identification of Prosopis cotyledon flour phenolics was carried out by interpretation of the spectral properties (UV and ESI-MS and MS/MS) of the compounds and comparison with those of reference samples and literature data. The main constituents in Prosopis mesocarp flour were flavonoid C-glycosides as described by Pérez et al, (2014) and Schmeda-Hirschmann et al, (2015).…”

Chemical and nutritional characterization of raw and thermal-treated flours of Mesquite (Prosopis laevigata) pods and their residual brans

“…Major increases in UV absorbance were found in thermaltreated flours with high levels of monosaccharides (Table 2), a substrate for Maillard reaction. Previous works reported the total phenolic compounds content in flours of Prosopis species using the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent method (Bernardi et al, 2010;Briones-Labarca et al, 2011;Cardozo et al, 2010;Cattaneo et al, 2016;Gallegos-Infante et al, 2013;Perez et al, 2014;Schmeda-Hirschmann et al, 2015;Sciammaro et al, 2016) with variability in the values, which can be due to different samples, species and sample treatment. Sample treatment during drying could enhance Maillard reaction activity, indirectly modifying the total phenolic compound content of Prosopis flours.…”

“…Trypsin inhibitors and phytohemagglutinins are present in seeds, which are denatured and inactivated upon heating (Barba de la Rosa et al, 2006;Gallegos-Infante et al, 2013). Pods of Prosopis species have been reported as a source of bioactive compounds (Felker et al, 2013;Schmeda-Hirschmann et al, 2015). Mesocarp (Schmeda-Hirschmann et al, 2015), seed (Bernardi et al, 2010;Briones-Labarca et al, 2011;Cattaneo et al, 2016;Sciammaro et al, 2016) and whole pod flours are a good source of polyphenolic compounds (Cardozo et al, 2010;Cattaneo et al, 2016;Gallegos-Infante et al, 2013;Perez et al, 2014;Sciammaro et al, 2016) with antioxidant (Bernardi et al, 2010;Briones-Labarca et al, 2011;Cardozo et al, 2010;Cattaneo et al, 2016;Perez et al, 2014;Schmeda-Hirschmann et al, 2015;Sciammaro et al, 2016), anti-inflammatory (Cattaneo et al, 2016;Perez et al, 2014), antihypertensive (Gallegos-Infante et al, 2013;Huisamen et al, 2013), and hypoglycemic (George et al, 2011) activities.…”

“…The mature fruit of the genus Prosopis is an indehiscent pod conformed by an exocarp, a developed mesocarp, and a woody endocarp which protects the seed (Felker et al, 2013). Pods and pods fractions of Prosopis species have been described in their nutritional profile: P. africana (Igwe, Ojiako, Anugweje, Nwaogu, & Ujowundu, 2012), P. alba (Cattaneo et al, 2016;Felker, Grados, Cruz, & Prokopiuk, 2003;Sciammaro, Ferrero, & Puppo, 2016), P. chilensis (Astudillo, Schmeda-Hirschmann, Herrera, & Cortes, 2000), P. glandulosa (Harden & Zolfaghari, 1988), P juliflora (Marangoni & Alli, 1988), P. laevigata (Barba de la Rosa, Frias-Hernandez, Olalde-Portugal, & Gonzalez-Castañeda, 2006; Gallegos-Infante, Rocha-Guzman, Gonzalez-Laredo, & Garcia-Casas, 2013), P. nigra (Felker et al, 2003), P. ruscifolia (Bernardi, Sanchez, Freyre, & Osella, 2010), and P. tamarugo (Astudillo et al, 2000); active compounds content and in vitro biological activity: P. alba (Cardozo et al, 2010;Cattaneo et al, 2016;Perez et al, 2014;Sciammaro et al, 2016), P. chilensis (Astudillo et al, 2000;Briones-Labarca, Muñoz, & Maureira, 2011;Schmeda-Hirschmann et al, 2015), P. laevigata (Gallegos-Infante et al, 2013), P. nigra (Cardozo et al, 2010;Perez et al, 2014), P. ruscifolia (Bernardi et al, 2010), and P. tamarugo (Astudillo et al, 2000); and in vivo biological activity: P. glandulosa (George, Lochner, & Huisamen, 2011;Huisamen, George, Dietrich, & Genade, 2013). Nutritionally, pods of Prosopis species are gluten free (Bernardi et al, 2010;Felker et al, 2013) and rich in good quality protein (Barba de la Rosa et...…”

Influence of temperature, calcium and sucrose concentration on viscoelastic properties of Prosopis chilensis seed gum and nopal mucilage dispersions

“…The viscoelastic properties of nopal mucilage from fresh and dried cladodes have been studied (Contreras-Padilla et al, 2016), but the effect of different temperatures and sweeteners on its viscoelastic behaviour has not been reported. Even if Prosopis chilensis seed gum has been gaining attention as a novel hydrocolloid, there is a current lack of information about its viscoelastic behaviour (Astudillo et al, 2000;Est evez et al, 2004;Schmeda-Hirschmann et al, 2015). As the purpose of hydrocolloids is food or pharmaceutical applications, it is important to determine the effect of different conditions that can be found during a production process, such as temperature changes, ion presence and sweeteners.…”