Total polyphenol content of tropical marine and coastal flora: Potentials for food and nutraceutical applications

The marine environment is abundant in natural products that are beneficial to humans. Among these compounds are the polyphenols produced by marine flora as secondary metabolites and used as a defense against stressful environmental conditions. Accordingly, recent pharmacological and biomedical studies showed that polyphenols from marine and coastal floras have several important bioactivities including antioxidant property. In this study, we measured the total polyphenol content (TPC) of 75 species of marine-associated flora. The TPC of their methanolic extracts was measured spectrophotometrically using the Folin-Ciocalteu assay and was expressed both as mg phloroglucinol equivalent per g of dry weight (mg PGE g(-1) DW) and as mg gallic acid equivalent per g dry weight (mg GAE g(-1) DW). The TPC values are higher when expressed in terms of GAE compared to PGE. Also, the mean TPC of tracheopytes (229 & PLUSMN; 43.0 mg PGE g(-1) DW) was higher compared to the mean TPC of macroalgae (69.4 & PLUSMN; 9.59 mg PGE g(-1) DW). For macroalgae, ochrophytes (97.9 & PLUSMN; 22.7 mg PGE g(-1) DW) had the highest mean TPC followed by chlorophytes (80.0 & PLUSMN; 20.5 mg PGE g(-1) DW) and rhodophytes (49.5 & PLUSMN; 8.60 mg PGE g(-1) DW). Moreover, our study also showed that TPC varied between young and mature tissues, among different color morphotypes and different parts of the plants. Although the concentrations of total polyphenols varied among species, ages, strains and parts of the plant, our study showed that marine and coastal floras are rich sources of polyphenols that could be further examined for their biological activities and other applications in food industry.

Automated summary

The marine environment is a rich source of natural products that have beneficial properties for humans, such as polyphenols produced by marine flora. These polyphenols have been found to have important bioactivities, including antioxidant properties. This study measured the total polyphenol content of 75 species of marine-associated flora and found that they varied among species. These findings have implications for further research on the biological activities and applications of marine and coastal flora in the food industry.