The inhibitive power of ascorbic acid was above 95% of radical at a concentration of 0.1 mg/ml, whereas at the same concentration, the other extracts failed to inhibit 50% of the free radical (Fig. 2). Ascorbic acid reached steady state in less than 1 min (Fig. 2a), whereas the ferulic acid solution reached steady state in a shorter time (Fig. 2b) than solutions of rice bran (Fig. 2c) and fermented bran extracts (Fig. 2d), thus indicating that

the mixture of phenolics in these extracts slowed down inhibition. The concentration of antioxidant required to reduce the initial concentration of DPPH by 50% (EC50) is the most commonly used parameter AZD6244 supplier to measure the antioxidant properties of a substance (Rufino et al., 2009); the lower the EC50 value, the higher its antioxidant power. Although the phenolic extract of fermented rice bran presented a lower antioxidant power (Table 3), it showed an EC50 value close to the values of ferulic acid and unfermented rice bran solutions. The EC50 values of these extracts were lower than check details the values found for cardamom and onion extracts (Mariutti, Barreto, Bragagnolo, & Mercadante,

2008) and white rice bran obtained from different cultivars (Muntana & Prasong, 2010). The ascorbic acid solution showed an EC50 value about 2.5 times lower than the other antioxidant solutions. But the EC50 value does not take into consideration the time to reach steady state of the inhibition reaction. According to the kinetic

classification based on the time needed to reach the EC50 value (Sánchez-Moreno et ioxilan al., 1998; Brand-Wiliams et al., 1995), ascorbic acid exhibited a fast antioxidant action, whereas ferulic acid and rice bran (fermented and unfermented) solutions displayed intermediate and slow actions, respectively (Table 2). Another kinetic classification of antioxidant solutions which takes into account the concentration and EC50 time, called antiradical efficiency (AE), indicates that while the ascorbic acid solution demonstrated very fast AE, the other solutions exhibited a low AE (Table 2), and the fermented and unfermented rice bran solutions displayed lower efficiency than the ferulic acid solution, caused by the presence of other phenolic compounds of slow AE contained in these extracts. The lower AE of fermented rice bran extract compared to rice bran can be compensated by increasing phenolic content in the fermentation (Fig. 1). The efficiency of phenolic compounds as antioxidants depends largely on their chemical structures, relative orientation and number of hydroxyl groups attached to the aromatic ring (Sánchez-Moreno et al., 1998).