reduction in solvents required for the assay. This is convenient when large sample sets need to be analysed. Distilled water (100 uL) was added to each of the 96 wells, followed by 10 HL of 50 g L-1 NaNO2 and 25 HL of standard or sample solution. After 5 min, 15 HL of 100 g L 1 AICI3 was added to the mixture 6 min later, 50 HL of 1 mol L NaoH and 50 HL of distilled water were added. The plate was shaken for 30 s in the plate reader prior to absorbance measurement at 510 nm. All samples and standards were measured against an acetone reagent blank according to the template depicted in Fig. 1. Catechin was used as a standard at 5-250 ug mL 1 to generate a calibration curve (average R 0.9990, Fig. 2(b))