The amount of extracted phenolic compounds obtained in this study by different solvents at different temperatures (30–60 °C) is presented in Table 1. In case of unfermented wheat (control), maximum TPC was attained in 70% acetone extract at 60 °C (1.1 mg GAE g−1 grain). Whereas, in case of R. oryzae fermented wheat, maximum TPC (6.78 mg GAE g−1 grain) was obtained in water extract at 40 °C. A comparable amount

of TPC was extracted by the same solvent (6.7 mg GAE g−1 grain) at 50 °C. Almost same amount of phenolics were released from fermented wheat by 70% methanol (5.92 mg GAE g−1 grain) at 40 °C and 70% acetone at 50 °C (5.89 mg GAE g−1 grain) and 60 °C (5.89 mg GAE g−1 grain). Similarly, there was no significant difference of TPC of fermented wheat extracted

C59 wnt mw by 70% ethanol at 30 °C (6.4 mg GAE g−1 grain), 40 °C (6.19 mg GAE g−1 grain) and 50 °C (5.92 mg GAE g−1 grain). If we consider the water soluble phenolics, it was clearly observed that SSF by R. oryzae RCK2012 increased the TPC of wheat by ∼11 fold at 40 °C. Recently, Schmidt et al. [27] observed only 2 fold increment of TPC in rice bran after SSF by R. oryzae. Various mechanisms have been identified for the antioxidant property of different plant extracts such as radical scavenging, binding of transition metal ion catalysts, decomposition of peroxides, prevention of chain reactions, prevention of continued hydrogen abstraction etc. About 20 assay methods are already available in literature for the estimation

of antioxidant property [23]. DPPH scavenging assay is a AZD8055 supplier widely used and one of the easiest method to evaluate the antioxidant property of a sample within a very short time period. DPPH is a stable free radical with purple color. Through electron transfer or hydrogen atoms donation, antioxidant compounds neutralize the free radical character of DPPH and thus purple color of the reaction mixture is changed to yellow [2]. Table Fossariinae 1 shows the DPPH scavenging property of unfermented and fermented wheat, extracted at different temperatures with different solvents. Increasing the extraction temperature from 30 °C to 60 °C, TPC as well as antioxidant activity were increased in unfermented wheat. Similar to TPC, maximum DPPH scavenging property (2.02 μmol TE g−1 grain) was observed in 70% acetone extract of unfermented wheat at 60 °C. Similarly, Zhou et al. [20] showed 50% acetone as a better solvent as compared to 50% methanol, for the extraction of antioxidant compounds from wheat. Whereas, in case of fermented wheat, maximum %DPPH scavenging property was attained at 40 °C with equivalent amount of scavenging activity in water (8.85 μmol TE g−1 grain), 70% ethanol (8.51 μmol TE g−1 grain) and 70% methanol (8.91 μmol TE g−1 grain). Therefore, 40 °C was selected as the optimum temperature for the extraction of antioxidant compounds from R. oryzae fermented wheat.