Science and Education Publishing Journal of Food and Nutrition Research 2333-1240 3 9 2015 11 19 Free Radical-scavenging, Nitrite-scavenging, and N-nitrosamine Formation Inhibitory Activities of Extracts from Kunlun Compositae Tea (Coreopsis tinctoria Nutt.) 587 592 EN Xincheng Yao Ting Zhang Hui Tang School of Pharmacy, Shihezi University, Shihezi, Xinjiang, P.R.China Heng Wang Wen Chen JFNR2015395 10.12691/jfnr-3-9-5 2015 6 17 2015 9 20 2015 11 17 Coreopsis tinctoria Nutt., Asteraceae, is widely used as an ornamental plant and as a popular tea production in China. In this paper, we report about the free radical-scavenging, nitrite-scavenging and N-nitrosamine formation inhibitory activities of ethyl acetate extract (EAE) and n-butanol extract (BE) of C. tinctoria ?owering tops (CTF). The results showed the BE contained higher total phenolic content (TPC) , total flavonoid content (TFC) and total proanthocyanidin (TPA) contents with DPPH, ABTS and *OH radical-scavenging activities (IC50) of 25.79±2.753, 26.61±3.158 and 2349.8±0.672 ug/ml, respectively. However, EAE showed higher radical-scavenging activities, with IC50 ABTS and *OH values of 13.71±2.973 and 321.6±0.576 ̦g/ml, respectively. The nitrite-scavenging and N-nitrosamine inhibitory activities (IC50) of EAE were 122.10±1.03 and 2362.86±11.26 ̦g/ml, respectively, whereas those of BE were 118.23±1.30 and 2182.79±10.74 ̦g/ml, respectively. Given these activities, we propose that CTF can be potentially used as a rich source of natural free radical and nitrite scavengers.