DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging assays are widely used methods for evaluating the antioxidant activity of a substance in both food and biological systems (Re et al., 1999). As shown in Table 2, all lotus extracts exhibited various scavenging activity on both DPPH and ABTS radicals with IC50 values ranging from 0.009 to 0.458 and 135.20 to 4917.51 μg/ml, respectively. Except the receptacle, which possessed significantly (p < 0.05) stronger DPPH radical scavenging ability than that of the BHT, all lotus extracts only showed significantly (p < 0.05) lower DPPH and ABTS radicals scavenging activities, when compared with those of the BHT controls. These findings suggested that the receptacle might act as an alternative source of natural antioxidants for the fast-growing functional food industry nowadays. Besides, a strong correlation between the DPPH radical scavenging activity and total phenolic content as well as the ABTS radical scavenging activity and total phenolic content were observed, indicating that the phenolic compounds in the ten lotus extracts would likely be responsible for their DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activities.