Chemical composition of volatile fraction of pakistani peanut and its

Arachis hypogaea Linn (peanut or groundnut) is an economically important crop. Thousands of peanut cultivars are grown in the world and studies have been carried out on these but, to the best of our knowledge, no salient work has been done on Pakistani cultivar so far. Here, we report the chemical composition of volatile fraction of Pakistani cultivar of peanut and its anti radical activities using 1,I-Diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radical (DPPH) scavenging and phospho molybdenum complex (PC) method. This study revealed that Pakistani cultivar exhibited an almost equal antioxidant potential to that of standard, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), which was obvious from their IC/sub 50/ values. The IC/sub 50/ value of peanut extract was found to be 13.42 +- 26 macro L/mL, relative to butylated hydroxytoluene, having 12.1 +- 0.92 macro/mL. (author)