The Antioxidant Power of an Algerian Dry Date Variety Phoenix dactylifera L.

The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.), which is the pivot of oasian agriculture, offers a range of agricultural by-products, which remain very poorly exploited and are still used in a traditional way in animal rations. Date waste or dry dates are the result of sorting after harvest, accounting for 25% of annual date production. This co-product of poor quality and low market value has been shown to be rich in various secondary metabolites endowed with antioxidant and anti-radical properties. In order to make the most of Algerian oasian flora, a potential source of bioactive natural molecules, a chemical and biological study of three parts of the fruit of the Phoenix dactylifera plant (‘N’ stone, ‘P’ pulp and ‘N + P’ whole dates) was carried out. The bioactivities of hydro-methanolic extracts were assessed by determining antioxidant activity. The date pulp ‘P’ showed better anti-free radical activity with the DPPH test (p < 0.01). The bioactive substances isolated in the stone fractions ‘N’ showed excellent antioxidant activity with the ABTS test (p < 0.05). Moreover, the raw extract of N showed excellent antioxidant activity superior to that of the standard BHT with the CUPRAC test (p < 0.001). The fruits of Phoenix dactylifera and mainly the stones ‘N’ have excellent antioxidant activity and abundant secondary metabolites, which could provide corroborating evidence in terms of the potential elimination of free radicals from the fruit.