Phytochemical and antioxidant comparison of different varieties of banana

Banana is widely cultivated fruit around the world. The edible portion (flesh) of banana has been used for making various foods as well as eaten directly. But the outer portion (peel) is not used so much and thrown directly into the environment in most of the cases. But bioactive compounds are mostly present into the peel and in this study the comparative phytochemical, antioxidant and antibacterial property of banana peel and fleshes are evaluated. Three different varieties of unripe raw banana were selected for this study. The peel and flesh of the banana was separated, dried, crushed into coarse powder and extracted by methanol and ethyl acetate. The total phenolic and flavonoid content, total antioxidant capacity, ferrous reducing power assay and DPPH radical scavenging activity was analyzed. All the extracts have considerable amount of phenolic and flavonoid content. The extracts also exhibit very good activity in total antioxidant assay, iron reducing power activity and DPPH radical scavenging assay. The methanolic extract of Dimkumari Peel (MDP) is the most effective among all the extracts. It has phenolic content equivalent to 10.215±0.873 mg/g of GAE and flavonoid content equivalent to 9.285±0.452 mg/g of CAE. The MDP has scavenging power 69.44% at 100 μl/ml concentration which is very reasonable compared to the standard BHT 77.48%. From this study it was found that banana peel and flesh both are rich source of antioxidants.