Phyto-Mediated Synthesis of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles Using Black Chokeberry Fruit (Aronia melanocarpa L.) Extracts for Promising Antioxidant, Antibacterial, Antidiabetic, and Photocatalytic Activities

In recent years, environmentally friendly methods for synthesizing nanoparticles have gained significant attention. This study aimed to develop a green, cost-effective, and facile method for synthesizing ZnO NPs using black chokeberry fruit (Aronia melanocarpa L.) extract and to evaluate their antibacterial, antidiabetic, and photocatalytic activities. Characterization of the phyto-mediated synthesized ZnO NPs was carried out using UV-Visible spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The antioxidant activity of the ZnO NPs was assessed using the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl hydrate (DPPH) radical scavenging assay, yielding a calculated IC₅₀ value of 154.2 µg/mL. The ZnO NPs exhibited effective antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella enteritidis, and Escherichia coli with minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) of 137.5 µg/mL, 135.4 µg/mL, 137.7 µg/mL, and 185.2 µg/mL, respectively. Additionally, the ZnO NPs demonstrated antidiabetic activity by effectively inhibiting α-amylase, an enzyme involved in carbohydrate digestion, with an IC₅₀ value of 2.355 mg/mL. Moreover, the ZnO NPs exhibited significant degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye, achieving a 95.5% degradation efficiency within 120 min under UV irradiation. These results suggest that phytogenically synthesized ZnO NPs using black chokeberry fruit extract have great promise for degrading environmental pollutants and may be valuable in various biomedical applications, including antioxidant, antibacterial, and antidiabetic therapies.