SummaryThe effectiveness of ethanol extracts from different leafy vegetables and commercial phenolic compounds in degrading chlorophyll (Ch1) in a model system using commercial horseradish peroxidase was determined in vitro.The amount of Chl degradation ranged widely among the leafy vegetables with parsley and mitsuba ethanol extracts having 70 and 60 fold greater activity than that of the garland chrysanthemum extract respectively, which were the extremes among the eight leafy vegetables.Among sixteen commercial phenolic compounds studied, Chl degradation occurred only with apigenin (flavone), apigetrin (apigenin-7-glucoside), naringenin (flavanone), p-coumaric acid (monophenol) and resorcinol (m-diphenol). These results indicate that Chl degradation in the peroxidase-hydrogen peroxide system is dependent on the type of phenol, specifically those which have a hydroxy group at the p-position.The only degraded Chl product noted in the HPLC chromatogram, when using pcoumaric acid, was 10-hydroxychlorophyll a (Chl a-1). The amount of Chl a-1 accumulated was minimal, compared to the amount Chl degraded, and implies that most of the Chl was degraded to a colorless product without the accumulation of Chl a-1 as an intermediate.