Purple waxy corn cob is an anthocyanin-containing agricultural waste used as a test sample herein in quality evaluation as it is highly interested for health use. Its implementations require some critical quality concerns. This study aims to assess purple waxy corn cobs for some physicochemical characteristics, antioxidative activity and hazardous contamination. Aqueous extracts of the cobs were found to contain 12.3 and 68.7 mg/g of total anthocyanins and total phenolic contents, respectively. Activation energies of about 20-30 kJ/mol were dependent of pH of the aqueous solutions. Its aqueous and ethanolic extracts gave IC50 of about 77.8 and 96.5 ppb, respectively. Total aflatoxins of the cob samples was determined by ELISA to be more than 8.5 ppb. Heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury are less than the allowance limits of WHO. Thus, purple waxy corn cobs, under the storage conditions, were shown to be safe and potential for health use.
