Freeze-drying beats oven-drying for preserving this herb's medicine
Bibi A, Jaitham U, Tongchai P, Jeeno P, Sutan K, Ounjaijean S, Chuljerm H, Wongta A, Yadoung S, Danmek K, Hongsibsong S.
Medicinal Plants
If you grow or forage false daisy (also called bhringraj), a weedy little herb common in warm, damp lawns and ditches, this study shows that tossing it in a low oven to dry for tea or tinctures strips away much of what makes it medicinally useful, especially in the roots.
Scientists compared three ways of drying a common medicinal plant called false daisy: freezing it dry, air-drying it in shade, or drying it in an oven. Freeze-drying kept the most antioxidants and beneficial plant chemicals intact, particularly in the flowers, while oven-drying caused the biggest losses, especially in the roots. It turns out different parts of the same plant respond very differently to drying, so how you process an herb matters just as much as which part you use.
Key Findings
Freeze-dried samples consistently had the highest antioxidant activity (measured by DPPH, ABTS, and FRAP assays) and retained the most phenolic and flavonoid content, especially in flowers.
Oven drying caused the greatest loss of antioxidant activity overall, with roots suffering the biggest reduction.
Root tissue showed the most metabolomic variation across drying methods, while flowers and stems stayed comparatively stable; key compound classes included flavonoids, coumestans, phenolic acids, and triterpenoid/saponin-related metabolites.
chevron_right Technical Summary
How you dry medicinal herbs changes how much of their healing compounds survive: freeze-drying preserved far more antioxidants and beneficial compounds in Eclipta prostrata (also called false daisy) than air-drying or oven-drying, especially in the flowers and roots.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Tissue-Specific Metabolite Profiling and Antioxidant Potential of <i>Eclipta prostrata</i> Following Different Drying Treatments.
<i>Eclipta prostrata</i> is a medicinal plant widely used in traditional medicine because of its antioxidant and therapeutic properties; however, comprehensive information on the effects of drying ...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Species Mentioned
Was this useful?
Want to tell us more? (optional)
Thanks for the note!
Something went wrong — please try again.
Too many submissions. Try again in an hour.
Ancient Amazonian forests were planted and tended by Indigenous farmers
Forests and fruits we romanticize as wild — including many plants now in our kitchens and gardens — may exist in their current abundance precisely because an...
Eclipta prostrata, the false daisy, is a species of plant in the family Asteraceae. It is widespread across much of the world.