By-product recovery of Opuntia spp. peels: Betalainic and phenolic profiles and bioactive properties

• Autor(a) principal: Melgar Castañeda, Bruno
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Dias, Maria Inês, Ćirić, Ana, Soković, Marina, Garcia-Castello, Esperanza M., Rodriguez-Lopez, Antonio D., Barros, Lillian, Ferreira, Isabel C.F.R.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/15076

Opuntia spp. are a tropical and subtropical plant that provides both edible green steams and fruits; however, the processing of this fruits results in the accumulation of enormous amount of by-products that can be a source of bioactive and pigmented compounds. Herein, three cactus pear from the species Opuntia ficus-indica var. sanguigna (OS) and gialla (OG) and Opuntia engelmannii (OE) were fully characterized regarding their phenolic and betalain composition and correlated with their antioxidant and antimicrobial activities. The hydroethanolic extracts of OE gave the highest amount of phenolic compounds isorhamentin-O-(deo xyhexosyl-hexoside) and betacianins (betanin); however, no betaxanthins were identified in this sample. This sample also revealed the lowest EC 50 values in all the antioxidant activity assays. Regarding antimicrobial activity, the hydroethanolic extracts of all species revealed to be more active than ampicillin. The pivotal objective of this work was to focus on exploring by-product biocompounds and possible outputs, thus, we could suggest the use of these natural colorants with intrinsic antioxidant and antimicrobial activity, which would grant industries to produce cleaner label products with functional benefits.