Background and Aim: Antioxidants are the main factors for neutralizing the free radicals which are active and harmful for human. Preparing antioxidation resources to reduce the effects of oxidation stress is important. These two plants are a rich plant source of polyphenolic compounds. Thus, this research, which is the first one of the kind in the world, was carried out to study the antioxidation properties of water and Alcoholic extracts of Cuminum cyminum and Cardaria draba .

  Materials and Methods: In this laboratory study, the antioxidant activities of the samples were determined by two different test systems, namely, DPPH free radical scavenging and ß-carotene/linoleic acid and the results were compared with synthetic antioxidant BHT. The data were expressed as the mean ± the standard deviation and they were statistically analyzed by SPSS software using ANOVA (P<0.05).

  Results: The results showed that among all the solvent extracts, methanolic and water extracts of Cuminum cyminum and methanolic and ethanolic extracts of Cardaria draba had high antioxidant activities as measured by DPPH scavenging (28.62±0.01, 20.58±0.12 and 50.78±0.17, 142.9±1.12, 56.08±2.72, 120.43±0.85 µg/ml) and inhibition of linoleic cid oxidation, respectively (77, 86,70, 58, 72, 62%). These parameters for BHT were 10±0.02 µg/ml, and 95.24%±0.14.

  Conclusion: The findings indicated that the water and alcoholic extracts of Cuminum cyminum and Cardaria draba can act both as natural antioxidants and as a possible food supplement or be used in pharmaceutical industry after complementary tests .