Comparative study of phenolic composition and antioxidant activity of leaf extracts from three wild Rosa species grown in different Tunisia regions: Rosa canina L., Rosa moschata Herrm. and Rosa sempervirens L.

Aim of the present study was to characterize and to compare phenolic composition and antioxidant prop-erties of methanol (MeOH) and ethyl acetate (EtOAc) extracts from leaves of Rosa canina, Rosa sempervirens and Rosa moschata collected from different Tunisian regions. Fifteen phenolic compounds were identified by means of HPLC-DAD and HPLC-DAD-ESI-MS analyses. It was shown that phenolic composition of Rosa canina extracts includes two kaempferol derivatives (Kaempferol 3-O-glucoside and kaempferol7-O-glucoside) which are not present in profiles of the two Synstylae species. Rosa moschata and Rosa sempervirens extracts are rich in quercetin derivatives. As regarding the total phenolic content (evalu-ated by the Folin-Ciocalteu assay), R. sempervirens and R. moschata showed the highest values with theirEtOAc and MeOH extracts, respectively. The highest mean values for DPPH, TEAC and FRAP tests wererecorded for the EtOAc extracts of R. sempervirens and for the MeOH extracts of R. canina. In the ORACassay, R. moschata and R. sempervirens showed the highest effectiveness for EtOAc and MeOH extracts,respectively. Taken together, these data suggest that leaf extracts of different Tunisian Rosa species shouldbe used as a potential source of antioxidant phenolics, and R. sempervirens and R. moschata are a goodalternative to R. canina especially in those regions where these species can be easily found.