Determination of antioxidant activity, chlorophyll and carotenoids content of Kappaphycus alvarezii: Comparison of seaweed with traditional Chinese Medicines

After the pandemic of COVID-19, there has been a growing interest in food safety concerns. Besides consuming wild-type animals, another focus is the synthetic compounds used in food preparation. Various reports show that antioxidant mechanisms might be closely related to decreasing the risk of disease infection. On 18 March 2020, Malaysia had the first Movement Control Order (MCO) that all communities must stay home. Public also questions whether natural food, mainly traditional Chinese medicine, can act as an antioxidant agent. Therefore, spectrophotometric procedures for determining the antioxidant capacities of selected samples were conducted. This method is based on scavenging 2, 2 diphenyl 1-picryl hydroxyl (DPPH) by adding a radical species or an antioxidant that decolourises the DPPH solution. This study aimed to compare, using the DPPH assay, the antioxidant level of Kappaphycus alvarezii to other traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) such as Andrographis paniculata, Lycium chinense and Ziziphus jujube. This study characterises the antioxidant activity of traditional Chinese medicines associated with carotenoid and total chlorophyll content from seaweed. Antioxidant analysis has shown that the highest antioxidant property was observed in the solvent extract of L. chinense. The DPPH assay provides an easy and rapid way to evaluate potential antioxidants in selected samples.