Evaluation of antioxidant activity and physico-chemical composition of methanolic and aqueous extracts of Nigella sativa L [Evaluation de l'activité antioxydante et la composition physico-chimique des extraits méthanolique et aqueux de la Nigella sativa L]

Nigella sativa l.,known by the common name black cumin is a medicinal plant from the ranunculaceae family,widely used in traditional medicine across the arab world and as a food condiment. in this work aqueous and methanolic extracts were prepared from the seeds of this plant. the quantitative estimation of total flavonoids and phenols by the colorimetric method showed that the extracts are rich in these compounds. evaluation of antioxidant power was performed using the method of dpph free radical trapping. the result indicated that the methanol extract showed more antioxidant power (ec50 = 0.64 ± 0.08 mg / ml),than the ascorbic acid (ec50 = 0.13879 ± 0.00112 mg / ml).