Phenolic and Flavonoid Contents of Some Plant Extracts from Tunisia Southern Landscape by Using Different Extraction Techniques: The Case of Retama reatam

Nowadays traditional medicine, a source of several bioactive molecules for therapeutic purposes, has become a cure for various diseases. In fact, the evaluation of plant exploitation has become progressively significant and this for their therapeutic effects of many traditional medicines may be due to the immense presence of natural antioxidants. In this respect, Retama reatam was chosen among six herbal Tunisian plants traditionally known for their therapeutic virtues, as the best source of total polyphenol content (1122,927g GEA/g extract) with an important extraction yield as ethanol is the solvent. The Soxhlet extraction always has the lowest value in total polyphenol content (164,857 GEA/g extract) for such solvent. The total flavonoid content of the different extracts is not significantly different from each other. However, the yield extraction remains higher for ethanolic extraction exceeding a value of 26.7%. Concerning antioxidant activity of Retama reatam, results suggest that supercritical CO2 extraction can be used as an efficient alternative for pre-treatment to eliminate fatty compounds and therefore evaluating oxygen radical absorbance capacity values.