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Research Article Volume 14 Issue 1
Influence of solvent polarity on phenolic and flavonoid content, antioxidant activity, and UPLC-PDA-ESI-MS profiling of wild Ziziphus spina-christi leaves
Fuad Al-Rimawi, Shawqi Harahsheh, Saleh Abu-Lafi
Received: February 13, 2026 | Published: February 27, 2026
Citation: Al-Rimawi F, Harahsheh S, Abu-Lafi S. Influence of solvent polarity on phenolic and flavonoid content, antioxidant activity, and UPLC-PDA-ESI-MS profiling of wild Ziziphus spina-christi leaves. Pharm Pharmacol Int J. 2026;14(1):15-21. DOI: 10.15406/ppij.2026.14.00488
Abstract
Ziziphus spina-christi (Z. spina) plant has a long history of traditional use in folk medicine for the treatment of various ailments. In this study, the phenolic and flavonoid components found in wild Z. spina leaves from Palestine were separated and identified using Ultra- Performance Liquid Chromatography (UPLC) coupled with Photodiode Array Detection (PDA) and Mass Spectrometry (MS) in both positive and negative electrospray ionization modes (UPLC-PDA-ESI-MS). Additionally, the antioxidant activity (AA), total phenolic content (TPC), and total flavonoids content (TFC) in three different leave extracts were investigated. The TPC was examined using Folin-Ciocalteu method, while the TFC was assessed by the Aluminum chloride method. Four different antioxidant assays were employed, namely, the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH) free radical scavenging activity, ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP), Cupric ion reducing antioxidant capacity (CUPRAC) and free radical scavenging ABTS. All the analyses were conducted using a UV-Visible spectrophotometer. The polarity of the extraction solvent directly affected the TPC, TFC, and AA results. The study revealed that extracting leaves with 80% ethanol yielded superior values for both TPC and AA, whereas absolute ethanol proved to be the optimal for achieving the highest TFC levels. Moreover, the results indicated that TPC ranged from 38.5 to 181.5 mg of gallic acid/g dry weight (DW) while the TFC ranged from 6.3 to 23.1 mg catechin/g DW. AA using FRAP assay was between 9.2 to 28.9 mmol Fe+2/g DW. CUPRAC assay was between 2988 to 7356 µmol Trolox/g DW. DPPH assay ranged from 250.4 to 390.6 µmol Trolox/g DW while ABTS assay was from 29.2 to 56.4 µmol Trolox/g DW. The extracts of wild Z. spina are abundant in phenolic compounds, including phenolic acids and flavonoid derivatives, as indicated by the results obtained from UPLC-PDA-ESi-MS analysis.
Keywords: antioxidant activity, Ziziphus spina-christi, total flavonoids content, total phenolic content, HPLC-PDA, UPLC-PDA-ESi-MS
©2026 Al-Rimawi, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.