Antioxidant and quinone reductase inductive activities of various organs of pepper

We analyzed antioxidant and quinone reductase (QR) inductive activities of various organs of pepper for utilizing by-product of them. Peppers were separated into fruits, roots, stems, and leaves and extracted with methanol for the analysis. As a result, pepper leaves showed higher phenol content than other organs. Using the DPPH assay, there was not considerably different activity depending on pepper organs, but pepper leaves showed significantly higher antioxidant activity using the ABTS assay. In FTC and TBA assay, stems and leaves showed significantly higher lip-idperoxidation inhibitory activity. In QR inductive assay, pepper tissues showed different QR inductive activity: leaves>roots>>stems>fruits. In addition, pepper leaves showed highest antiprolif-eration activity on hepa1c1c7 among pepper tissues in 50-200 μg/mL. These results indicate that pepper leaves have high potential to be a good functional food material due to high QR inductive and antioxidant activities.