In Vitro Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Activity of Extracts from Morus alba L. Leaves, Stems and Fruits

Abstract

In this study, the aqueous and ethanolic extracts (leaves, stems and fruits) from Morus alba L., a traditional Chinese medicine, were evaluated for their antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. Ethanolic extracts showed higher contents of both total phenolics and flavonoids than aqueous extracts. The total phenolic content was in the order of: leaf extracts > fruit extracts > stem extracts, whereas the total flavonoids was: leaf extracts > stem extracts > fruit extracts. Using DPPH assays, the concentrations providing 50% inhibition (IC(50)) values of aqueous extracts from leaves, stems and fruits were 7.11 ± 1.45 mg/ml, 86.78 ± 3.21 mg/ml and 14.38 ± 2.83 mg/ml, respectively, whereas the IC(50) values of ethanolic extracts were 3.11 ± 0.86 mg/ml, 14.62 ± 2.45 mg/ml and 12.42 ± 2.76 mg/ml, respectively. In sum, the antioxidant activities of ethanolic extracts from M. alba L. were stronger than the aqueous extracts, and in the order of: leaf extracts > fruit extracts > stem extracts. The ethanolic extracts exhibited moderate antimicrobial activities, whereas the aqueous extracts showed poor antimicrobial properties in our test system. This study validated the medicinal potential of M. alba L.

Antioxidant and antimicrobial activities with GC/MS analysis of the Morus alba L. Leaves

“…While TAS values of leaf-ethanol extract was found as 1.56 mmol Trolox Eqv./L, TAS values of leaf-distilled water extract were found as 1.45 mmol Trolox Eqv./L. While the recent report that suggests the antioxidant activity of distilled water extract was better than ethanol extract with DPPH assay, we found better TAS value for ethanol extract with Erel's method [16]. …”

Extractos de hojas de morera (Morus alba) como una alternativa de control del moho azul en frutos de manzana en postcosecha

“…The greatest fungal growth rate was observed in the absolute control (Table 1). According to Chon et al (2009), the greatest content of phenols was determined when methanol was used as a solvent to perform the extraction in mulberry leaves, which is important when considering phenols as secondary metabolites with antimicrobial properties (Wang et al, 2012). However, this study obtained similar results in the tests which used methanol and water as solvents, therefore we can infer that another unknown metabolite or metabolites, different to phenols, could be responsible for the observed antimicrobial effect.…”

“…Los resultados demuestran que el uso de metanol o agua son menos influyentes en la coloración del fruto. Además, como se mencionó previamente, el metanol es el solvente con el cual se extrae la mayor cantidad de fenoles (Wang et al, 2012) y es preferible por ser menos contaminante y costoso que otros solventes.…”

“…The results show that the use of methanol or water are less influential on the coloring of the fruit. Also, as entioned earlier, methanol is the solvent used to extract the most phenols (Wang et al, 2012) and is preferred since it is less pollutant and costly than other solvents.…”

Comparative Assessment of the Anti-oxidant and Anti-clastogenic Activity of Morus alba Leaves

“…The methanol fraction of leaves showed the best scavenging activity as evidenced by better efficacy in DPPH (40.89 ± 2.65) and Hydroxyl (250.05 ± 3.34) scavenging assays, which could be due to the better extractability of methanol for extracting phenols. Since the extractability of phenolic compounds depends on the solubility, which in turn depend on the polarity of the solvent, methanol being the better polar solvent compared to n-hexane, could extract more phenolic compounds 18 and exhibit potent antioxidant and anticlastogenic activity. The hydroxyl radicals are mutagenic andclastogenic in nature.…”