Medicinal & Aromatic Plants
Open Access
ISSN: 2167-0412
ISSN: 2167-0412
Anh V Le, Sophie E Parks, Minh H Nguyen and Paul D Roach
University of Newcastle, Australia
Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology
Western Sydney University, Australia
Central Coast Primary Industries Centre, Australia
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Medicinal & Aromatic Plants
Gac (Momordica cochinchinensis S.) seeds contain bioactive compounds with medicinal properties namely: Trypsin inhibitors, saponins and phenolics. We hypothesized that Microwave-Assisted Extraction (MAE) and Ultrasonic-Assisted Extraction (UAE) would be better than conventional aqueous extraction for recovering these bioactive compounds. The efficiency of extraction for the MAE and UAE techniques was also compared to other low alcohols solvents: Methanol, 50% methanol, ethanol, 70% ethanol and water-saturated n-butanol. Of all the methods, MAE achieved the highest extraction of phenolics (3.18 μg GAE g-1). Of the aqueous methods, MAE was also the best for saponins (19.04 mg AE g-1) but it did not improve the extraction of trypsin inhibitors, for which the conventional water extraction was the best (118.45 mg trypsin g-1). However, for saponins, water-saturated n-butanol and methanol extracts were the best overall (40.75 and 38.80 mg AE g-1, respectively). As a measure of antioxidant capacity, the ABTS assay gave highest value to MAE extract (23.92 μmol TE g-1) while the FRAP assay gave highest values to water-saturated butanol and 70% ethanol extracts (5.25 and 4.71 μmol TE g-1, respectively). UAE did not improve any extractions. Therefore, it is concluded that MAE was the best for extracting phenolics and the best aqueous method for extracting saponins while conventional extraction method was the best for extracting trypsin inhibitors in defatted Gac seeds.
E-mail: vananh.le@uon.edu.au