High hydrostatic pressure extraction of phenolic compounds from Maclura pomifera fruits

Abstract

High hydrostatic pressure processing (HHPP) is a food processing method, in which food is subjected to the elevated pressure which is mostly between 100 to 800 MPa. HHPP is seen not only in food engineering, but also have other application areas, such as extraction of active ingredients from natural biomaterials. In this study, several extraction conditions such as two different solvents [methanol and solvent cocktail (dH₂O:ethanol:methanol:acetone:CH2Cl2 - 1:2.5:2.5:2:2)], two different pressures for high hydrostatic pressure extraction (HHPE) (250 and 500 MPa), three different extraction methods (shaking at room temperature, soxhlet extractor and HHPE) and different extraction times for each extraction method (10 min for HHPE, 2 h for shaking and 14 h for soxhlet extraction) were used in order to extract phenolic compounds from Maclura pomifera fruits. The highest amount of phenolic compounds (913.173 μg gallic acid equivalent (GAE/mL) was observed in HHPE at 500 MPa using solvent cocktail, where the lowest amount (316.877 μg GAE/mL) was in soxhlet extraction using methanol. In terms of extraction efficiency, the highest amount of extraction is seen in the shortest time period. It was observed that HHPE in solvent cocktail was the most effective method when compared to the other methods tested.

Key words: Maclura pomifera, Osage orange, hedge apple, phenolic compound, high hydrostatic pressure extraction.