Physicochemical Characterization of Electrospun Poly(vinyl alcohol)/Parsley Extract Nanofibers

Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) leaves are rich in phenolic acids, flavonoids, and volatile compounds with antioxidant activity, but these bioactives degrade rapidly after extraction. Here, aqueous parsley leaf extract (PLE) was incorporated into electrospun polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofibers and characterized by SEM, ATR-FTIR, XRD, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and the DPPH radical scavenging assay. SEM showed continuous submicron fibers under the conditions tested (17 kV, 18 cm, 0.3 mL/h), with a mean diameter of 333.7 ± 94.0 nm (N = 40, measured across two separate micrographs). ATR-FTIR showed that PVA and PLE bands were both present in the composite spectrum, with an O–H stretching shift consistent with possible hydrogen-bonding interactions. XRD showed that the main PVA reflection persisted after electrospinning, with a lower raw peak intensity after PLE addition, suggestive of partial interaction with the polymer chains. TGA showed that the main decomposition temperature of the PLE/PVA nanofiber (277 °C) fell between those of PVA (266 °C) and PLE (296 °C), consistent with PLE incorporation within the PVA matrix. In the DPPH assay (n = 3), pure PLE showed a radical scavenging activity of 96.61 ± 0.29% and the PLE/PVA nanofiber 89.32 ± 0.27%, indicating measurable antioxidant activity of the composite fibers; because the samples were not normalized to an equivalent extract dose and no PVA-only control was included, the activity retained after electrospinning is not quantified. These preliminary results show that aqueous parsley extract can be incorporated into PVA nanofibers with retention of fibrous morphology. Unlike a recently reported multicomponent PVA/metal–organic-framework system containing parsley extract for wound healing, this work addresses a simple, organic-solvent-free binary PLE/PVA system and its basic physicochemical characteristics; it does not claim a performance advantage over that or other plant extract-loaded PVA systems, and release, antimicrobial, and application-specific tests were not part of this study.