a comparative study between different tunisian propolis essential oils and their antioxidant activities

Propolis is a resinous substance collected by bees from plants with a complex and variable chemical composition. propolis and its fractions possess multiple biological activities. this study focused on a chemical and statistical comparison between four tunisian propolis essential oils (peo) and their antioxidant activities. volatile oils were extracted by hydrodistillation and analyzed by gc-ms. essential oil yield varied from 0.095% to 0.324%. a total of 59 volatile components were identified mainly dominated by sesquiterpenes and diterpenes hydrocarbons. six major components were found in all samples collected from the four different locations α-cedrol, manoyl oxide, manool, totarol, tricosane, and eicosane. the antioxidant activities of tunisian peo have been evaluated using two methods: β-carotene-linoleic acid bleaching and dpph radical scavenging assays and the results were compared with those of the standard antioxidant (triolox). peo from bizerte region presented a lower ic50 value (30.5 μg/ml) than that of the standard antioxidant trolox (ic50 = 40.05 μg/ml) indicating high antioxidant capacity using dpph assay but for the β-carotene-linoleic acid bleaching assay, peo from zouarine region had the lowest value of ic50 (26.5 μg/ml) compared to the standard (ic50 = 31.25 μg/ml). our findings demonstrated that peo possess high antioxidant activities and may be suggested as a new potential source of natural antioxidant.