Evaluation of phytochemical, antioxidant and anticancer activities of Indonesian mangroves herbal tea

Abstract

Mangrove plants are potential raw materials for a variety of food and beverage items. Mangrove leaves can be processed into is mangrove herbal teas. Eight leaf samples of Acanthus ilicifolius (AI), Avicennia marina (AM), Rhizophora apiculata (RA), Nypa fruticans (NF), Rhizophora mucronata (RM), Sonneratia caseolaris (SC), Sonneratia alba (SA), and Xylocarpus granatum (XG) from Berau Regency, Kalimantan, Indonesia were investigated for phytochemical content (TPC and TFC), antioxidant activities (ABTS, DPPH, and FRAP), and anticancer activities (HepG2 and CaCo2 cancer cell line) have been done. We compared mangrove herbal teas to commercial black tea (Camelia sinensis/CS) for all activities. The result showed that the TPC value of CS was the highest and for TFC was in XG. Moreover, the antioxidant activities on ABTS possessed similar values except for AM, which had the lowest activities; on DPPH, SC and AI showed the highest activities among others; while SC and XG had the highest activities on FRAP. SC showed the highest activities on both cancer cell lines from the anticancer activities. We conclude that mangrove herbal teas from SC leaves have the potential to be functional food with great activities as antioxidants and anticancer agents.