Antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of fruit extracts from different fresh chili peppers

Background The aim of the current study was to assess the antimicrobial and antioxidant potential of ethanol extracts obtained from the fruit of five species of fresh chili pepper, Capsicum (C.) baccatum L. (Aji Amarillo), C. chinense (Fidalgo Roxa), C. annuum (Cherry Chocolate), C. pubescens (Rocoto Orange) and C. frutescens (Peruvian Purple). Methods To obtain the ethanol extracts, accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) was applied. DPPH assay was used to determine the antioxidant activity of the extract samples. The disc diffusion method was used to measure antimicrobial activity against nine investigated microorganism species. Results The tested extract samples exhibited DPPH radical scavenging activities ranging from 0.24 p0.01 (Peruvian Purple) to 0.72 p0.02 (Aji Amarillo) mg TEAC∙gn1 dw. The differences between all the varieties were statistically significant (P Conclusions Considering these results, Capsicum spp. can be used as a source of novel antioxidant and antimicrobial compounds.