Cost-effective Isolation of Bioactive Compounds from a Discarded Bioresource – Defatted Seeds of Camellia oleifera

Abstract

The Camellia oleifera oil industry is the economic mainstay in many highpoverty mountain regions of China, but the defatted seeds are currently discarded, leading to a waste of bioresources. In this work, a costeffective technique was designed to isolate the flavonoid, saponins, and polysaccharides by ultrasonic-assisted acid-base alternative extraction. The activities of these compounds were evaluated by their DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging abilities in vitro and inflammatory inhibition in mice, and the economic efficiency was assessed. The optimal extraction conditions by response surface design were 1.6% HCl, water/seed ratio 16, extraction time 89 min, and ultrasonic power 310 W. The yields of the flavonoid, saponin, and polysaccharide were, respectively, 1.4 ± 0.2%, 6.7 ± 0.8%, and 22.5 ± 1.7%. The extracts could eliminate DPPH and ABTS radicals and alleviate inflammation with concentration dependence, and showed excellent capacity in the order of flavonoid ≥ saponin > polysaccharides. The residue after extraction was cellulose, with a yield of 63.0 ± 2.4%. The defatted seeds could produce a value of $11.35 per kilogram after production of the four valuable extracts, which would greatly increase the income in these high-poverty areas. This integrated extraction technique provides valuable recycling utilization of a typically discarded bioresource.

Extraction of Saponin fromCamellia oleiferaAbel Cake by a Combination Method of Alkali Solution and Acid Isolation

“…Many extraction methods for saponin from Camellia cake, for example, conventional water extraction, ethanol extraction processes, and some novel techniques (such as absolute ethyl alcohol method, supercritical CO 2 extraction method, and ultrasonic solubilization method) [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], have been extensively studied over the recent decades. However, water extraction process has problems of high-energy consumption, large evaporation, difficult separation of extracts and low quality of saponin.…”

Microwave-assisted Extraction of Polysaccharides from Bamboo (Phyllostachys acuta) Leaves and their Antioxidant Activity

“…The weaknesses of HWE, including high energy consumption and low yields, had inhibited this method from being widely applied. To optimize the extraction technology, many novel techniques had been employed, such as ultrasonic-assisted extraction (UAE), enzyme-assisted extraction (EAE), supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), and pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) (Kadam et al 2013;Matsunaga et al 2013;Ye et al 2015). These novel extraction technologies had been successfully used in food and pharmaceutical applications for extraction of bioactive compounds (Easmin et al 2015).…”

Coating of Mineral Acids with Niobic Solid Acid for Preparing Furfural from Nut Shell of <i>Camellia oleifera</i> Abel

“…Tea seed oil as well as known as eastern olive oil comprises oleic acid, linoleic acid, α-linolenic acid, stearic acid, vitamin E, flavonoids, sterol and polyphenols, and the ingredients of which are very similar to the compositions of olive oil (Zhang et al, 2008;Zhang, Xue, Zhong, Xu, & Zhu, 2014). Besides, tea seed oil is also applied in pharmaceutics (Wei et al, 2016;Zhang, Wang, Wu, Xu, & Chen, 2010;Zhou et al, 2014;Zong et al, 2015), cosmetics (Jadoon et al, 2015) and agriculture (Ye, Li, & Fang, 2015). Tea seed oil is very popular and arouse extensively interests all over the world.…”