The Nutraceutical and Functional Food Potentials of Dry Doum Palm Fruit (Hyphaene thebaica)

Abstract

Doum palm fruit is one of the underutilized fruits and is mainly used by the local people without knowing the nutritional value and the pharmacological components associated with the fruit parts. Thus, this research was designed to evaluate the proximate composition, antioxidant activity and phytochemical content of doum palm fruit. The fruit sample was obtained from the farm and market and was portioned into six; the epicarp, mesocarp, epicarp and mesocarp blend obtained from the farm and market were all converted into flour. Proximate analysis was done using the standard method, antioxidant activity using 2, 2-diphenyl-1-pierylhyrazyl DPPH method after water and solvent (ethanol) extraction of the samples at different concentrations: 50 %, 60 %, 70 % and 100 % ethanol and 100 % water, which were used for the six different flours for each that makes it up to 30 samples. While phytochemicals were identified using LC-MS. Results showed that samples collected from the farm had higher proximate composition than the ones obtained from the market. Samples from the farm showed higher antioxidant activity at 595.30 and 62.59 mgGAE/g for total phenolic and flavonoid contents, respectively; 0.078 and 2008.9 IC50 (µg/ml) for the DPPH and Reducing power showed by the Samples from the farm. The phytochemical constituents showed that samples from the farm have more bioactive compounds than those obtained from the market. Compounds such as Phytoene, Liriodenine Xanthophylls e.t.c were detected. Thus, the findings proved the presence of a considerable amount of nutraceutical and phytochemical constituents in the dry doum palm fruit. Therefore, it can be further studied to look for ways to benefit from its rich potential in managing various ailments.