Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Study of Organic Radicals in Some Herbal Plants

In this work we show the impact of the roasting process on the properties of organic radicals in some herbal products added to cereal coffee. The EPR study shows the presence of radicals in dried herbal products, both natural and roasted. Changes in the relative intensity of the EPR signal and in the g-factor for unroasted and roasted plant material can be observed. This indicates to the recombination processes of radicals. Roasting process increases the number of radicals. The analysis of EPR spectra show that they consist of two Gaussian lines which indicate that there are at least two different kinds of radicals. The values of g-factor about 2 may be derived from a number of very different radicals. For this reason the identification of such radicals is not strictly possible.