Herbs used for medical purposes are required to meet high pharmacopoeial quality standards, whereas spices used as additives to dishes and food products do not have to meet such rigorous standards. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to compare medicinal herbs and spices of the same plant species that are applied in different areas with regard to the total phenolic content (TPC) and total antioxidant capacity (TAC) of their methanolic and water extracts. This study showed that the TPC values of both extracts prepared from medicinal herbs and spices as quantified using the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent did not differ significantly; however, the TAC values obtained by the DPPH assays of the methanol and water extracts differed significantly. No such differences were found for the same extracts when the FRAP assay was used for analysis. This study shows that the level of antioxidants is dependent on the plant species and the botanical family. Plants belonging to the Lamiaceae and Asteraceae families are richer in phenolic compounds and have stronger antioxidant potentials than those originating from the Apiaceae family. Multivariate statistical analysis indicates that the majority of medicinal herbs and spices of the same plant species are found in the same cluster. In addition, the extraction solvent was identified as one of the factors influencing the clustering of the plants on the PCA scatterplot and CA dendrogram.
Keywords: Medicinal herbs; Spices; Total antioxidant capacity; Total phenolic content.