Antioxidant Activities of Extracts from Celery Leaves (Apium Graveolens L) Grown in Jos, Nigeria

The presence of natural antioxidant in plants is well known. Plant phenolics constitute one of the major groups of components that act as antioxidant and free radical terminator. Hence, this study focused on investigating the antioxidant activity of Celery plant (Apium graveolens L). The fresh leaves were collected, crushed and extracted with ethanol and acetone by maceration. The radical scavenging properties of the extracts were determined by measuring changes in absorbance of DPPH radical at a wave lenght of 517 nm by UV and ascorbic acid is used as the standard. It showed that the crude ethanolic extract has higher antioxidant activity compared to ascorbic acid and acetone extract with less scavenging activity. The values were (IC50 114.6 µg/mL) for ascorbic acid, (IC50 112 µg/mL) for the crude ethanolic extract and (IC50172 µg/mL) for crude acetone extract. The result shows that Celery plant grown in Jos possess good antioxidant properties which may be linked to the presence of phenolics and flavonoids in the plant, which justifies its use as a medicinal plant. This can be further investigated for the isolation and identification of active compounds of medicinal utilities.