Comparative Analysis of the Antioxidant Activities of Green Peppers Cultivated under Conventional and Environmental-Friendly Farming conditions = Comparative Analysis of the Antioxidant Activities of Green Peppers Cultivated under Conventional and Environmental-Friendly Farming conditions

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Environmental-friendly agriculture (EFA) is defined as the cultivation of crops with reduced amounts or without chemical-synthetic pesticides. Recently, the use of chemical pesticides has decreased significantly; therefore, we cultivated peppers following EFA- and conventional methods and compared their antioxidant activities. To accomplish this, the environmental-friendly cultivated peppers (EFPE) and conventionally cultivated peppers (CCPE) were extracted with 70% methanol and the effects of the extracts on the cell viability, intracellular ROS generation, lipid peroxidation and catalase activity of HepG2 cells were evaluated. EFPE showed a stronger protective effect against oxidative stress induced-cell death than that of CCPE. EFPE also reduced intracellular ROS generation (42.7% to 26.4%) following treatment with hydrogen peroxide more effectively than that of CCPE (24.2% to 6.3%). Furthermore, EFPE and CCPE showed protective effects against lipid peroxidation and induced catalase activity, although these effects were not statistically significant. Taken together, these results suggest that EFPE showed stronger antioxidant activities than CCPE, and thus represent evidence that EFA with biocontrol materials may improve the functional properties of crops and/or secondary metabolites with antioxidant activities when compared with conventional agricultural practices.