Assessment of Bioactive and Antioxidant Capacities of Water-extraction Substances from Black Waxy Corn Silk with Different Ingredients with Different Mass Ratios

Abstract

Corn silk is rich in a variety of biologically active ingredients. The development of tea products based on corn silk and supplemented by other auxiliary materials could be of great significance for alleviating high blood pressure, high blood fat, and high blood sugar. The main ingredients of corn silk tea products on dominating online shopping APPs were sorted out in current study. Then, in order to assess the bioactive substances and antioxidant capacities in the water-extraction of corn silk tea products, an experiment was carried out with corn silk as the main material and other ingredients as supplements under different mass ratios with 1∶2, 1∶1, and 2∶1. The results showed that thirteen ingredients were sorted out by analyzing 139 kinds of corn silk tea products sourced from 8 shopping APPs, occurrence times of which were more than 20% of total products number, such as mulberry leaves, hawthorn and pueraria. Under the mass ratio of black corn silk to most ingredients with 2∶1, the contents of total polysaccharides, total saponins and total flavonoids in the water-extraction were higher, but the antioxidant capacity did not show an advantage. The integrated effects of bioactive substances and antioxidant capacities were assessed by subordinate function value method, and it was concluded that corn silk with pueraria, gardenia, chrysanthemum, pericarpium citri reticulatae and tartary buckwheat had better comprehensive effect under the mass ratio of 2∶1. Therefore, 1.5 g corn silk with 0.75 g pueraria, gardenia, chrysanthemum, pericarpium citri reticulatae and tartary buckwheat could be used as potential products for corn silk tea.

Keywords

• black corn silk
• water-extraction
• biological substances
• antioxidant capacity
• teabags