PHENOLIC COMPOSITION AND ANTIOXIDANT PROPERTIES OF ANZER BEE POLLEN ESRA ULUSOY 1,3 and SEVGI KOLAYLI 2 1 Macka Vocational School, Karadeniz Technical University, Macka, Trabzon 61750, Turkey 2 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey 3 Corresponding author. TEL: +90-462-512-35-36; FAX: +90-462-512-35 52; EMAIL: esraege@yahoo.com Accepted for Publication January 13, 2013 doi:10.1111/jfbc.12027 ABSTRACT Seventeen phenolic compounds related to the botanical origins of 13 Anzer pollens from Turkey have been analyzed by RP-HPLC. LOD values of standards were found to be between 0.0192 and 0.1313 mg/L with good linearity (r > 0.9977). The mean content of identified total phenolics ranges from 0.5 mg/ 100 g pollen to 2.6 mg/100 g pollen. While a common profile of phenolic com- pounds comprising p-OH benzoic acid, vanillic acid, caffeic acid, syringic acid, p-coumaric acid, ferulic acid, rutin, trans-cinnamic acid, and cis,trans-abscisic acid was detected in all Anzer pollen, catechin was not determined in any of the pollen samples. Furthermore, antioxidant properties of pollens were determined using total phenolic content, FRAP, CUPRAC and DPPH • (2,2-diphenyl-1- picrylhydrazyl) radical-scavenging activity tests. The antioxidant activities showed a marked correlation with total phenolics. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Bee-collected pollen is one of the richest and the purest natural food supplements packed by honeybees into granules and subsequently harvested from hives by humans. Bee pollen is composed of nutritionally essential substances such as car- bohydrates, proteins, amino acids, lipids, vitamins, mineral substances and trace elements. It also contains considerable amounts of polyphenolic substances, mainly flavonoids, which are regarded as potent antioxidants. Flavonoids can be used to evaluate botanical origin and to set up quality standards for the assess- ment of nutritional and physiological properties of bee pollen. This paper pro- vides an applicable RP-HPLC method for the determination of 17 phenolic compounds in Anzer pollens and for the investigation of their total phenolic con- tents and antioxidant capacities. INTRODUCTION Phenolic compounds or polyphenols are major constituents of plants and play an important role in the nutritional and organoleptic properties of plants and their derived prod- ucts. Phenolic compounds are classified as secondary metabolites rather than primary metabolites. Flavonoids and phenolic acids constitute the most important polyphe- nolic class with more than 5,000 already described com- pounds (Wollgast and Anklam 2000). They exhibit a wide range of biological effects including antibacterial, anti- inflammatory, anticarcinogenic, anti-atherogenic, anti- thrombotic, anti-allergic, immune modulating, analgesic and antioxidant activities (Loku et al. 1995; Salah et al. 1995; Serafín et al. 1996; Catapano 1997; Vinson et al. 1998). Bee pollen is collected from various selected flower species by the honeybee Apis mellifera and is the only natural source of proteins, lipids, vitamins, minerals and amino acids, which are essential for the growth and devel- opment of bees. The consumption of bee pollen or its derivative products, as a dietary supplement, by humans has been rapidly increasing due to its high saccharide, lipid, protein and amino acid contents. Bee-collected pollen is also a very important source of vitamins and polyphenolic compounds, particularly flavonoids, which may act as potent antioxidants (Campos et al. 2003; Arráez-Román et al. 2007). Among natural products, honeybee pollen has been applied for centuries in traditional medicine as well as Journal of Food Biochemistry ISSN 1745-4514 73 Journal of Food Biochemistry 38 (2014) 73–82 © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.