Extraction, Isolation, and Characterization of Plant Natural Products Using Conventional and Non-conventional Techniques

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Phytochemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2024 | Viewed by 598

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, University of Chile, Las Palmeras 3425, Nuñoa, Santiago 7800024, Chile
Interests: conventional and non-conventional extraction; isolation of secondary metabolites from terrestrial and marine organisms; nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR); liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS); green chemistry from natural products
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The extraction of secondary metabolites depends on many conditions, such as the extraction technique and the extraction solvent used. Such techniques can be divided into conventional or non-conventional. Conventional techniques use organic solvents, temperature, and agitation, such as with Soxhlet, maceration, and hydrodistillation techniques. On the other hand, non-conventional techniques reduce energy use and are considered clean techniques (Green); supercritical extraction, pressurized liquid extraction, ultrasound- and microwave-assisted extraction, pulsed electric field, high hydrostatic pressure, and high voltage electrical discharges are all non-conventional techniques. For the isolation of plant natural products along with their purification, some classic techniques, including traditional chromatography (open column, chromatotron, etc), liquid chromatography, and countercurrent chromatography, are essential.

This Special Issue aims to include the most recent processes used in the extraction, isolation, and purification of plant natural products. Therefore, it focuses on extraction and isolation using classical methods and novel methodologies; structural characterization based on NMR and MS/MS; identification of extracts via hyphenated techniques and their pharmacological applications. We hope that our colleagues can contribute original research papers and/or reviews according to their expertise.

Dr. Carlos Areche
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • conventional extraction
  • chromatography
  • HSCCC
  • HPLC
  • structural elucidation
  • unconventional extraction
  • green chemistry
  • green technology
  • natural products
  • plants
  • supercritical fluids
  • ultrasound
  • microwave

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

11 pages, 610 KiB  
Article
Microwave-Assisted Extraction of Secondary Metabolites Using Ethyl Lactate Green Solvent from Ambrosia arborescens: LC/ESI-MS/MS and Antioxidant Activity
by Evelyn Guillen, Hector Terrones, Teresa Cano de Terrones, Mario J. Simirgiotis, Jan Hájek, José Cheel, Beatriz Sepulveda and Carlos Areche
Plants 2024, 13(9), 1213; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13091213 - 27 Apr 2024
Viewed by 383
Abstract
Alternative solvents are being tested as green solvents to replace the traditional organic solvents used in both academy and industry. Some of these are already available, such as ethyl lactate, cyrene, limonene, glycerol, and others. This alternative explores eco-friendly processes for extracting secondary [...] Read more.
Alternative solvents are being tested as green solvents to replace the traditional organic solvents used in both academy and industry. Some of these are already available, such as ethyl lactate, cyrene, limonene, glycerol, and others. This alternative explores eco-friendly processes for extracting secondary metabolites from nature, thus increasing the number of unconventional extraction methods with lower environmental impact over conventional methods. In this context, the Peruvian Ambrosia arborescens was our model while exploring a microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) approach over maceration. The objective of this study was to perform a phytochemical study including UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS and the antioxidant activity of Ambrosia arborescens, using sustainable strategies by mixing both microwaves and ethyl lactate as a green solvent. The results showed that ethyl lactate/MAE (15.07%) achieved a higher extraction yield than methanol/maceration (12.6%). In the case of the isolation of psilostachyin, it was similar to ethyl lactate (0.44%) when compared to methanol (0.40%). Regarding UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS studies, the results were similar. Twenty-eight compounds were identified in the ethyl lactate/MAE and methanol/maceration extracts, except for the tentative identification of two additional amino acids (peaks 4 and 6) in the MeOH extract. In relation to the antioxidant assay, the activity of the ethyl lactate extract was a little higher than the methanol extract in terms of ORAC (715.38 ± 3.2) and DPPH (263.04 ± 2.8). This study on A. arborescens demonstrated that the unconventional techniques, such as MAE related to ethyl lactate, could replace maceration/MeOH for the extraction and isolation of metabolites from diverse sources. This finding showed the potential of unconventional methods with green solvents to provide eco-friendly methods based on green chemistry. Full article
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