Screening study of phenolic and flavonoid contents and antioxidant capacity of flower extracts from fourteen Celosia cristata breeding entries

Ubai NSA, Seno DSH, Ambarsari L, Syukur M, Nurcholis W. 2026. Screening study of phenolic and flavonoid contents and antioxidant capacity of flower extracts from fourteen Celosia cristata breeding entries. Biodiversitas 27 (10): d271006. https://doi.org/10.13057/biodiv/d271006. Cockscomb (Celosia cristata, Amaranthaceae) is grown as an ornamental and used in traditional medicine, and its inflorescences contain phenolic compounds, flavonoids, and betalain pigments. We screened fourteen entries from a C. cristata breeding collection in Bogor, Indonesia, eleven of them derived from crosses between the cultivars Red Cristata and Bombay Pink, to describe variation in the measured phytochemical and antioxidant values and to find entries that deserve replicated evaluation. Dried flower tissue of each entry was extracted once with 96% ethanol by microwave-assisted extraction, and each extract was analyzed in three technical replicate wells for Total Phenolic Content (TPC, Folin-Ciocalteu), Total Flavonoid Content (TFC, aluminum chloride), DPPH radical scavenging, and Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power (FRAP). Three determinations whose absorbance records could not be verified were excluded. TPC ranged from 1.10 to 3.78 mg gallic acid equivalents g-1 Dry Weight (DW) (13 entries), TFC from 0.43 to 3.43 mg quercetin equivalents g-1 DW (12 entries), DPPH from 0.37 to 0.90 µmol Trolox Equivalents (TE) g-1 DW, and FRAP from 3.65 to 16.60 µmol TE g-1 DW, with a coefficient of variation among wells of 0.5-9.5%. Across entry means, TPC was closely related to FRAP (r = 0.91, n = 13), whereas DPPH was not related to any other measure. No entry ranked first in all assays: 3-4m-1m had the highest TFC and FRAP but low DPPH activity and no reportable TPC, 5-1m-4m had the highest TPC, and 3-4m-4m the highest DPPH value. Among the eleven entries with all four measurements, 5-1m-4m, 4-1p-2p, and 5-1m-6m had the highest composite screening indices. Because each entry was represented by one extract from a single harvest, these entries are candidates for replicated field and laboratory trials rather than superior genotypes.