Proximate Constituent Analysis and Antioxidant Activity of Annual Edible Flowers

Background: Flowers are not only for their ornamental, aesthetic purpose but it is a great nutritious to human diet and health. These are rich source of pigments and possess antibacterial and antioxidant properties. Few flowers are used traditionally in diet and there is huge scope to use edible flowers in nutraceutical, pharmaceutical and pigment industry. But very less research has been done till date for finding proximate constituent, antioxidant activity and mineral profiling of edible annual flowers. The present work investigated the proximate constituent analysis and antioxidant activity of few annual flowers. Methods: In this laboratory analysis, different annual flowers were used for the experiment. They were Celosia cristata var. Deep Armor Purple, Celosia cristata var. Twisted Orange, Celosia cristata var. Pink, Celosia argentea var. Cristata Yellow, Celosia argentea var. Plumosa, Celosia cristata var. Bombay Pink, Gomphrena globosa, Gallardia pulchella, Tagetes erecta, Tagetes patula and Calendula officinalis. Proximate constituent analysis and antioxidant activity were performed using Association of Official Analytical Chemist (A.O.A.C) methods. Result: Among the different annual flowers, the maximum ash content (15.58%) the crude protein content (13.45%) and the crude fibre content (13.39%) were found in Gomphrena globosa flowers, whereas the minimum ash content (7.24%), the minimum crude protein (6.51%) and the minimum crude fibre content (6.63%) were reported in Calendula officinalis flowers. On the other hand, the antioxidant activity was found to be superior in the flowers of Tagetes patula (60.34%) followed by Tagetes erecta (57.99%) and the minimum antioxidant activity (43.89%) was found in flowers of Celosia cristata var. Twisted Orange.