Background. Kunun-zaki is an indigenous non alcoholic beverage in Nigeria which has been reported to contain high nutritional values because of the raw materials from which it is made. Therefore, this research was carried out to investigate the antioxidant and antimicrobial activities of extracts of some of the spices used in the production of the beverage. Material and method. The spices; Xylopia aelhiopica (Eru), Syzgium aromaticum (Kanafuru), Monodora myristica (Ariwo), Piper guineensis (Iyere) and Piper guineense (Uziza leaf) were purchased from local market in Akure, Nigeria. Crude extracts were obtained from the spices using three solvents which include; ethanol, hexane and water. Twenty five g of each spice was soaked in 50 mis of solvent respectively. After evaporation filtrate of water extract and dry extracts of hexane and ethanol were obtained and stored at 4°C until use. The extracts from each of the spices were subjected to screening for their total phenolic content, antioxidant activity and antimicrobial assay using standard methods. Results. Syzgium aromaticum exhibited the highest total phenol content for both the ethanolic (8.75 TAE/g) and hexanolic extract (10.73 TAE/g) while no phenol was detected from the water extract. The ability of the extracts to bleach the free radical 2,2’-diphenyl-l-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) revealed that the water extracts of the spices possessed better antioxidant properties with values ranged from 58.17-77.53% compared to hexane extracts (44.79-73.87%) and ethanol extracts (23.10-47.05%). Contrastly, ethanolic extracts of the spices exhibited best antibacterial activities with inhibition zones of 10.0-27.0 mm and the antifungal activity (11.0-34.0 mm) against Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus except for M. myristica that produced no inhibition against A.flavus. Conclusion. It can be deduced from this study that water extracts of the spices investigated may be good antioxidant while ethanol extracts are better antimicrobial agent against certain food spoilage or foodbome microorganisms.
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