Bioactive Compounds, Antioxidant Activity and Nutritional Quality of Different Culinary Aromatic Herbs

In the present work, four of the most widely used culinary herbs (parsley, dill, lovage and celery leaves) in the Romanian traditional cuisine were assessed for some nutritional quality parameters (moisture content, titratable acidity, ascorbic acid content and mineral content), total phenolics content, total flavonoids content and antioxidant activity by 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging assay. In addition, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with diode-array detection was applied for the identification and quantification of some individual phenolic compounds in the selected aromatic herbs. Although parsley showed the highest ascorbic acid content (206.32 mg/100 g fw), it registered the lowest antioxidant activity. Fresh lovage recorded the highest total phenolic content (577.04 mg GAE/100 g), total flavonoids content (298.38 mg QE/100 g) and antioxidant activity, followed by dill and celery leaves. Among the identified phenolic acids, ellagic acid was predominant in lovage and celery leaves whereas sinapic and vanillic acids were prevalent in dill. Among flavonoids, myricetin was predominant in parsley and celery leaves whereas rutin was predominant in dill and lovage.