## 3 Results and Discussion
### Effect of Thermal Processing on the Antioxidant Capacity of Broccoli Extracts  
The antioxidant capacity of water and 70% ethanol extracts from thermally processed broccoli was determined using three different methods (Table 3). The ABTS and FRAP results showed that the water remaining after boiling broccoli had the highest antioxidant potential (57.57 \(\pm\) 18.22% and 79.34 \(\pm\) 3.28%, respectively), while the DPPH results indicated the highest antioxidant potential of air-fried (36.12 \(\pm\) 15.71%) and steamed (35.48 \(\pm\) 2.28%) broccoli. The ABTS and FRAP data also showed that steaming and air-frying broccoli had a relatively high antioxidant capacity compared to the other thermal processing methods. Using the same antioxidant assays, other authors reported that thermal processing of broccoli increased its antioxidant potential [46,79]. They found that the antioxidant potential of boiled and steamed broccoli was not significantly different (ABTS and DPPH) or that boiled broccoli even had a higher antioxidant potential than steamed broccoli (FRAP). The discrepancy with our results could be due to the difference in cooking time. In our study, cooking took much longer (30 min compared to 5 and 8 min in their study). This could have resulted in more antioxidants being degraded or leached out. [PERSON] et al. [14] investigated the effect of thermal processing methods on the antioxidant potential of broccoli sprouts. Their results showed that, according to the DPPH method, steamed vegetables had the highest antioxidant potential, followed by stir-fried, while air-fried had the lowest. In contrast, in the FRAP method, air-fried vegetables had the highest antioxidant potential, followed by steamed, while the stir-fried had the lowest. In our study, both the ABTS and FRAP methods showed a significantly higher antioxidant capacity of water in which broccoli was cooked (water remaining after boiling) than the cooked tissue itself. Using the DPPH method, no significant difference was found between the water remaining after boiling and the cooked tissue itself (18.26 \(\pm\) 12.52% and 27.14 \(\pm\) 10.43%, respectively). These results are consistent with FRAP being more suitable for hydrophilic antioxidants and DPPH being more suitable for lipophilic antioxidants, whereas ABTS reliably detects both types of antioxidants [79,80]. It is likely that a lot of hydrophilic antioxidants were extracted into water during cooking and were detected by the FRAP and ABTS methods. On the other hand, most lipophilic antioxidants were retained in the tissue and detected by the DPPH method. From these results, it can be concluded that the water remaining after boiling broccoli has a higher antioxidant potential than the cooked tissue. Water and tissue from blanched broccoli showed similar antioxidant potential, with the FRAP method indicating that the tissue had a higher potential than water (35.37 \(\pm\) 8.86% and 48.33 \(\pm\) 10.49%, respectively). Blanched broccoli had the same (ABTS and FRAP) or lower (DPPH) antioxidant potential than boiled, suggesting that blanching (a shorter thermal processing) does not preserve broccoli better than cooking. Steaming clearly preserved antioxidant potential of the broccoli tissue, while the remaining water had a very low potential. Therefore, steamed broccoli, the water remaining after cooking, and air-fried broccoli had the highest antioxidant potential. The