الفهرس 
Chapter 1Only 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The contents of the total flavonoids and the total phenolics were estimated in the extracts of DP and FDDP. Our results showed that FDDP extract contained the higher amounts of flavonoids and phenolics than the DP extract (Table 2). Platat et al. (2014) suggested that the phenolics and flavonoids are strongly and positively related to the antioxidant capacities and contribute to prevention of many diseases. Therefore, the DP and FDDP extracts were examined for their in vitro antioxidant activity. The assays of the DPPH and •OH scavenging activities were carried out to investigate the antioxidant activity of DP and FDDP extracts. The scavenging activities of DPPH and •OH are usually expressed as IC50; the amount of the antioxidant necessary for decreasing the initial concentration of DPPH and •OH by 50%. The antioxidant activity is higher at the low IC50 (Kchaou et al., 2014). Table (3) demonstrated that FDDP extract has the lower values of IC50 compared to that of DP extract. So, FDDP extract showed higher scavenging activity compared to DP extract. The •OH was reported to be the most powerful radical among all ROS. It may cause lipid oxidation that result in cell damage causing several diseases. Therefore, the •OH scavenging activity was believed to be one of the most essential anti-oxidant mechanisms (Perron & Brumaghim, 2009). Kchaou et al. (2014) stated that date pits extracts exhibited a potential •OH-scavenging activity. Also, our results agree with Khan et al. (2016) who evaluated the reducing power of date pits through an in vitro assay of •OH-scavenging activity. They proved that date pits have powerful antioxidant activity. Thus, it could be concluded that date seeds can serve as a natural source of antioxidants due to their phenolic compounds, anthocyanins, flavonoid glycosides, and procyanidins (Fallahi et al., 2015). The study of Belal (2008) stated that the nutritional quality of date pits could be improved by degrading fibers to liberate the trapped nutrients within the date pits fibers. Also, Ahmed et al. (2016) reported that the powder extract of the roasted date pits exhibited high DPPH-scavenging activity.