Proximate Composition and Biological Assay of Two Mustard Species (Brassica nigra (L.) K. Koch and Brassica tournefortii Gouan) in Libya

Abstract

Wild plants play a vital role in human life as sources of food, feed, dyes, fuels, ethnomedicine, phytoremediation, etc. (Zimdahl, 2007). The importance of these plants is attributed to their richness in proximate primary composition (carbohydrates, proteins, fibers, fats, andminerals), and bioactive secondary metabolites (total phenols, flavonoids, tannins, alkaloids, saponins, etc.) (Newman and Cragg, 2007;Kumari and Kakkar, 2008). The biological activities of plants include many aspects, for example, antioxidant activity, allelopathic, antimicrobial, cytotoxic