Biochemical Composition and Biological Activities of Various Population of Brassica tournefortii Growing Wild in Tunisia.

, commonly known (Aslooz) in Tunisia, is an annual plant, native to the North Africa and Middle East. species are used as food, their young leaves can be cooked, providing nutrients and health-giving phytochemicals such as phenolic compounds, polyphenols and carotenoids. Phytochemical composition and bioactivity of leaf extracts, collected from four different bioclimatic zones in Tunisia, are investigated in the present study. Results showed that location and climatic variations can alter the phytochemical composition of . Interestingly, HPLC analysis enabled identifying lutein and beta-carotene at high concentrations, especially in extracts of collected from Gabes (B2) (344 µg/g of lutein) and collected from Zarzis (B3) (1364 µg/g of beta-carotene). In particular, the antioxidant activity measured by DPPH assay showed that the extract of the plants collected from the growing region of Zarzis exhibits the highest antioxidant activities (0.99 mg/mL). All the extracts showed a relevant antiproliferative activity, especially toward the Caco-2 cell line. These preliminary data resulted in being useful to correlate growth environmental conditions with different accumulation of metabolites in Brassica species still being poorly studied.