Antioxidant Activity and Phenolic Content of Extracts of Wild Algerian Lingzhi or Reishi Medicinal Mushroom, Ganoderma lucidum (Agaricomycetes)

Mushrooms can be employed as functional food or medicines for prevention and treatment of several chronic diseases, since they are rich sources of bioactive metabolites. Nonetheless, the therapeutic value of Algerian mushrooms remains largely unexplored. There’s no work concerning the different medicinal properties of the endemic Ganoderma lucidum in Algeria. The present study aims to compare the antioxidant potential of an endemic specimen collected at the forest of lake Tonga in the national park of EL Kala in North-East of Algeria with findings from other countries. To this end, the contents of phenolics and flavonoids were determined, using three solvents of increasing polarity (chloroform, ethyl acetate and butanol). The mushroom specimen was identified as G. lucidum based on strong molecular evidence using ITS, LSU and SSU sequences.Our study has shown that ethyl acetate extract contained higher total phenolic (171.1±1.06μg GAE/mg and 102.5±0.69 μg PE/mg extract) and flavonoid contents (25.48±0.13μg QE/mg and 40.45±0.83μg RE/mg extract) than in other mushroom extract (chloroform and butanolic). The ethyl acetate extract showed a good antioxidant activity in DPPH (28.51±0.24 μg/mL), ABTS•+ (10.06±0.13 μg/mL), Galvinoxyl radical (15.46±0.48 μg/mL), Reducing power (22.74±0.30 μg/mL), CUPRAC (21.36±0.04 μg/mL) and Phenanthroline assay (12.87±0.26 μg/mL).These results suggest that G. lucidum could be used as a source of strong natural antioxidants for the food and pharmaceutical industries.