## 3 Results and Discussion
### Antioxidant Potential
Unlike the other antioxidant assays, the less polar extracts, particularly the ethyl acetate and DCM extracts exhibited higher activity in the metal chelating assay (22.46-28.52 mg EDTAE/g) than the less polar extracts. For instance, while the methanolic extract did not show metal chelating activity, water and infusion extract displayed the metal chelating activity of 12.21 and 27.58 mg EDTAE/g, respectively (Table 3). The relatively higher antioxidant activity of the polar extracts (infusion, water, and methanol) observed in scavenging and reducing assays could be attributed to the richness in bioactive compounds of the extracts compared to the other studied extracts. This fact was also confirmed by correlation analysis. The correlation heatmap is given in Figure 1. This is in line with previous reports suggesting a correlation relationship between phytochemical content and antioxidant activity of plant extracts and the presence of specific antioxidant compounds [30]. The polar extracts contained higher concentrations of phenolic acids such as ferulic and \(p\)-coumaric acids, also present in a wide variety of plants that are known to be \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Extracts** & **TPC (mg GAE/g)** & **TFC (mg RE/g)** & **PBD (mmol TE/g)** \\ \hline n-hexane & 13.73 \(\pm\) 0.41  & 1.45 \(\pm\) 0.03  & 19.73 \(\pm\) 0.59  \\ DCM & 19.66 \(\pm\) 0.53  & 1.52 \(\pm\) 0.02  & 52.95 \(\pm\) 0.34  \\ Water & 25.17 \(\pm\) 0.17  & 0.90 \(\pm\) 0.03  & 7.33 \(\pm\) 0.04  & 1.06 \(\pm\) 0.01 [FOOTNOTE:]Footnote : Values are reported as mean \(\pm\) SD. MeOH: Methanol; TPC: Total phenolic content; TFC: Total flavonoid content; PBD: Phosphomolybdenum; GAE: Gallic acid equivalent; RE: Rutin equivalent; TE: Trolox equivalent. Different superscripts indicate significant differences in the tested extracts (\(p<0.05\)).[ENDFOOTNOTE] \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Total bioactive compounds and total antioxidant capacity (by phosphomolybdenum assays) of the tested extracts. good antioxidants. The antioxidant effect of phenolic compounds is due to the reactivity of phenol moiety. Although there are numerous mechanisms for the antioxidant activity owing to this reactivity of the phenol moiety of phenolic acids, the radical scavenging via hydrogen atom donation is considered to be the principal mechanism [31]. Moreover, rutin was found to be present in a much-elevated quantity in the methanolic extract compared to the other polar extracts. Rutin is well-known to be a potent antioxidant and studies are reporting its strong radical scavenging ability and effective inhibition of lipid peroxidation [32]. Rutin has been found to contribute to the antioxidant capacity of some plants [33]. In our correlation analysis, rutin was strongly correlated with the antioxidant properties (Figure 1). In addition, methanolic extract was seen to contain 5-caffeoylquinic acid in greater quantity unlike the other extracts also known to possess antioxidant properties [34]. Hence, the presence of these antioxidant compounds in higher amounts could have accounted for the higher antioxidant potential of the methanolic extract in most of the antioxidant assays (Figure 1). In addition, the TFC in the methanolic extract was found to be higher than that in the other extracts in this study. Flavonoids have recently received much attention because of their ability to reduce free radical formation and scavenge free radicals. There have been numerous studies on the potential of flavonoids to act as antioxidants in vitro, thereby establishing structure-activity relationships of flavonoids' antioxidant activity [35; 36; 37].