Natural antioxidants have a wide range of biochemical activities including inhibition of ROS generation, direct or indirect scavenging of free radicals and alteration of intracellular redox potential. An antioxidant, which can quench reactive free radicals, can prevent the oxidation of other molecules and may, therefore, have health promoting effects in the prevention of degenerative diseases. In addition, it has been reported that there is an inverse relationship between dietary intake of antioxidant rich food and the incidence of human diseases. In searching for novel natural antioxidants, some plants have been extensively studied in the past few years for their antioxidant and radical scavenging components. Ipomoea species is one of them. Literature survey revealed its medicinal importance. Antioxidant activity of leaves and flowers extracts of I. carnea is performed due to phenolic and flavonoid contents, by employing radical scavenging assay ; 2,2 –diphenyl, 1-picryl hydrazyl (DPPH). Ascorbic acid is used as a standard. Quantitative determination of phenols and flavonoids are carried out using spectrophotometric method. Total flavonoid content is determined as quercetin equivalent according to the method described by Malik and Singh and total phenolic content is determined as pyrocatechol equivalent using Folin- Ciocalteu reagent. In the investigated range of concentrations (50 -500μg/ml), significant DPPH radical scavenging value was exhibited by the acetone extract (25-89%). The antioxidant activity of ethanol (10.55-88.11%) and ethyl acetate (5.5-79%) extracts were lower than that of the acetone extract. All the three extracts exhibited higher antioxidant activity than that of the fresh leaves itself (4.22-64%). This study was carried out for the first time from this plant source.
