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Quality seed is the most important input for sustainable agricultural productivity. Recent studies highlight the role of antioxidants in scavenging the reactive oxygen species, which is an indicator for quality seed. In natural ageing conditions, reactive oxygen species accumulates in the seeds that lead to seed deterioration. Wall bound phenolics in seed coat are potential antioxidants that encounter the reactive oxygen species. Four soybean genotypes with different seed coat wall bound phenolics were studied in 2018 at ICAR-Indian Institute of Seed Science and found that the black coat seed such as kalitur and JS76-205 showed highest phenolic content (117.00 and 128.50 μg/mL) and antioxidant activity of 51.38 and 46.07 μg eq. ascorbic acid, respectively. On contrary, the harasoya (green coated seed) resulted lowest phenolic content 14.30 μg/mL, while in RAUS-05 (white coated seed) the antioxidant activity is 2.58 μg eq. ascorbic acid, which is significantly lower than the other genotypes. Further, the genotypes were evaluated for the seed quality parameters and observed that kalitur and JS76-205 showed higher germination percentage (80%) and vigor indices I (900.33) and II (35.01) than the other genotypes. These results substantiate the hypothesis that the seed coat wall bound phenolics with antioxidant properties could alleviate the reactive oxygen species, protects from mechanical and chemical damage and helps in enhancement of seed quality parameters.

Food security coupled with nutritional security is a great concern to address the menace of malnutrition. In the present study, total phenolic contents and antioxidant potential of 35 soybean genotypes have been determined (2018). Besides, the solvent system for efficient extraction of total phenolic content coupled with antioxidants (nutraceuticals) has been optimized. The results revealed that the higher total phenolic contents from soybean seed coats and cotyledons were obtained in acetone-water-acetic acid (70:28:02, v/v) mixture. Total phenolic content (TPC) in soybean genotypes were in the range of 2.58–51.37 μg/mL and 4.26–12.76 mg/mL in seed coats and cotyledons, respectively. In soybean seed coats, higher phenolic content was observed in JS76-205 genotype with 128.5 μg/ml, while JS-2 and MAUS-158 showed 9.00 μg/mL. On the other hand, TPC derived from soybean cotyledons of NRC-37 and MAU-81 showed 12.76 mg/mL; whereas in PS-1347 resulted 4.26 mg/mL. Characterization of phenolic compounds in soybean seed coat and cotyledon revealed the presence of protocatechuic acid, p-hydroxy benzoic acid, 4-hydroxy benzaldehyde, vanillic acid, vanillin, p-coumaric acid and ferulic acid. Further, antioxidant studies performed from soybean seed coats and cotyledons were in the range of 9.00–128.50 μg eq. ascorbic acid and 2.13–4.27 mg eq. ascorbic acid, respectively. This study demonstrates that the TPC derived from soybean coat and cotyledon can be used not only as nutraceutical but also ensure food and nutritional security.