Natural antioxidant potential by the ethanolic extract of Rhodomyrtus tomentosa (Aiton) Hassk.

Indonesia is one of the countries in tropical area having high diversity of medicinal plants. Our preliminary study showed that Rhodomyrtus tomentosa possess some biological activities. Rhodomyrtus tomentosa (Aiton) Hassk., commonly known as masisin in Indonesia, is a small shrubby tree with pink flowers and pink edible fruit. It has been reported that the plant species is native to southern and southeastern Asia (Winotai et al. 2005). The plant has been used as traditional medicine for diarrhea and woud treatments (Ho, 1999). In relation with cosmeceutical purposes, R. tomentosa has also been used as skin-whitening, antiaging, and skin beautifying agents (Miyake et al. 2006). Potential of the R. tomentosa extract was reported to exhibit strong antimicrobial activity against gram-positive bacteria (Saising et al. 2008; Limsuwan et al. 2009). In our course into the search for Indonesian plants having potential biological activities and isolation of their active compounds, the antioxidant property of leaves, wood and root extracts of R. tomentosa was reported here.