Food Sci. Biotechnol. 21(1): 261-265 (2012) DOI 10.1007/s10068-012-0034-0 Effect of Far Infrared Drying on Antioxidant Property, Anti-inflammatory Activity, and Inhibitory Activity in A549 Cells of Gamguk (Chrysanthemum indicum L.) Flower Won-Woo Kim, Amal Kumar Ghimeray, Jin Cheng Wu, Seok Hyun Eom, Beom-Goo Lee, Wie-Soo Kang, and Dong-Ha Cho Received: 8 July 2011 / Revised: 11 November 2011 / Accepted: 15 November 2011 / Published Online: 28 February 2012 © KoSFoST and Springer 2012 Abstract This research demonstrated and compared the effects of shade and far infrared drying (FIRD) of gamguk (Chrysanthemum indicum L., CE) flowers extract on total phenolic (TP), total flavonoid (TF) content, anticancer and anti-inflammatory activities. The research data revealed that the TP and TF contents were highest in FIRD treated CE flower extracts. Similarly, the effect of CE on lipopoly- saccharide (LPS) induced nitric oxide (NO) production in RAW264.7 cells showed in a dose dependent manner. Further, the CE inhibited the tumor necorsis factor (TNF)- α, cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 expression, and prostaglandis E 2 (PGE 2 ) production. The anticancer activity was monitored in A549 lung cancer cell, which showed that FIRD treated CE inhibited cell proliferation significantly ( p<0.05) higher in dose and time dependent manner. Keywords: gamguk (Chrysanthemum indicum L.), far infrared ray, polyphenol, anti-inflammatory, A549 Introduction Gamguk (Chrysanthemum indicum L.) is a well-known herb and medicinal plant belonging to the family Compositae, is widely grown in most part of the world including Korea. Flowers and buds of gamguk have been traditionally used for the treatment of inflammation, cancer, Parkinson’s diseases, respiratory diseases, various immune-related disorders, hypertension symptoms, and several infectious diseases such as pneumonia, colitis, stomatitis, carbuncle, and fever in folk medicine in China and Korea for thousands of years (1-7). Drying method can change the chemical profile of plants. Traditionally, shade dry method is used in most of the drying process to remove the moisture and to maintain the nutrition contents. However, there is a limitation in shade drying process which takes, long drying time, large space and can susceptible to fungus and other microorganisms (8). Likewise, another popularly used drying method is hot air drying. However, it has been found that hot-air drying makes the qualities of plant materials deteriorated substantially, such as color, nutrient concentration, flavor and texture, because of being exposed to elevated drying temperatures for a long time (9-11). Recently, far infrared drying is gaining popularity in the medicinal plant industry to produce high-quality dried plant. The infrared radiation has tremendous advantages including reduction in drying time, high energy efficiency, uniform temperature in product, and space saving (12-16). The radiation has the wavelength between 3-1,000 µm can easily penetrates inside the tissue of the exposed materials. The radiation absorbed directly by materials and interacts with the internal structure of material with low energy loss to create internal heating with molecular vibration of the material and dry the martial from inner to outer layers via both radiation and convection in far infrared drying (17,18). However, the advantages of far infrared drying in gamguk flower drying have not been Won-Woo Kim, Amal Kumar Ghimeray, Jin Cheng Wu, Wie-Soo Kang, Dong-Ha Cho ( ) College of Biomedical Sciences, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Gangwon 200-701, Korea Tel: +80-33-250-6475; Fax: E-mail: chodh@kangwon.ac.kr Seok Hyun Eom Horticuture Biotechnology, Kyung Hee University, Youngin, Gyeonggi 446-701, Korea Beom-Goo Lee Korea Energy Technology, Seoul 153-772, Korea RESEARCH NOTE