Enzymatic cell wall disruption process improves antioxidant activity and polyphenol content of camellia pollen extracts

Abstract: Bee pollen is used as a dietary supplement which contains nearly all nutrients required by humans. It has been used as a folk medicine for centuries to alleviate or cure conditions such as colds, flu, ulcers, premature ageing etc. Related researches have indicated that pollen has stronger antioxidant activity home and abroad. It has been pointed out that polyphenols have unique effect on human health and are the most widespread biodiversity natural material, which is widely recognized in the scientific community. Bee pollen is rich in polyphenol compounds, which can be used as potential antioxidant. Because of the solid pollen wall, some biological active ingredients and nutrients are not effectively absorbed by human body, thus the cell wall disruption is essential. Although research has manifested that the enzymatic cell wall disruption can increase the extracts antioxidant, few studies have conducted on the basic active ingredients and the extraction progress. In order to establish the extraction progress of pollen antioxidants and explore the relative correlation between the polyphenol contents and its antioxidant activity, a series experiments were conducted on the influence of antioxidant ability and the polyphenol contents with different factors which were cell wall disruption enzyme, extraction solvent, and ultrasonication. The results showed that compared with the alkalase, the supernates from celluase progress showed higher free-radical scavenging ability of DPPH and reducing power; compared with warm water and pH3.7 citric acid-phosphate buffer, ethanol extracts from the sediments of the celluase showed higher polyphenol contents and free-radical scavenging ability. It showed some correlation coefficient between total phenols and two antioxidant indices in camellia pollen was 0.8685 and 0.7600 respectively (p>0.05). In terms of ethanol and water extract, cell wall disruption with celluase and ethanol extract increased the polyphenol contents reducing power and the scavenging ability of DPPH by 1.82, 2.17, 1.4 times and 1.56, 1.38, 11 times respectively. The contribution to the reducing power, DPPH radical scavenging ability and the polyphenol content of the mixture were 1.6:1, 3:1, 1.08:1. The results provide some reference to the development and the utilization of the pollen resource.