Feasibility of Using Bitterness and Foaming Properties as Surrogate Instrument in Assessing Antioxidant Potentials of Selected Eggplant Cultivars

Abstract

This study attempt to circumvent the hurdle associated with the utilization of laborious and expensive procedure to assess some health promoting properties of eggplant fruits. The feasibility of using simple and cheap procedure as a surrogate tool to gain insight into the antioxidant potentials of eggplant cultivars was evaluated. Some eggplants cultivars obtained fresh were used for the work. Extracts from the garden eggs were analysed for relative reducing power, total phenolic content and radical scavenging activity using DPPH. Physical and Sensory attributes such as foaming ability and stability, and level of bitterness were also carried out. Results showed that assessment of some antioxidant markers notably total phenolic content (2.266 – 6.406), radical scavenging activity (35.00 – 82.50) and relative reducing power (0.139 – 1.145), showed positive correlation (r = 0.60281 - 0.803348; r = 0.861877 -0.905333; and r = 0.851459 - 0.958941) with bitterness, foaming capacity and foaming stability respectively. Simple and cheap quality control protocol could be used as surrogate tool to gain insight into the antioxidant markers, a health promoting endowment of some eggplants. Keywords - Eggplants, bitterness, foaming capacity, surrogate tool, antioxidant potentials.