Study of artichoke tincture obtained by pressurized liquid extraction

Artichoke is a plant that has been used for hundreds of years for both food and herbal purposes. With the growing search of the pharmaceutical industry for natural active principles with reduced side effects, research has been carried out with tincture of artichoke leaves that are reported as having beneficial actions to the liver, gastrointestinal system, action against chronic diseases such as diabetes and anti-HIV, besides being prebiotic. This work aimed to study the extraction yield and composition of the extracts obtained by pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) in an intermittent production. In this green technology, it was used ethanol as a solvent and the yield and extracts activities were planned following a 24-1 experimental design. It was studied the independent variables temperature(T), solvent volume(V), static time(St) and batch number(B) that ranged from 40 to 60°C, from 60 to 80% of the extractor volume, from 6 to 10min and from 3 to 5 cycles, respectively. The tinctures were evaluated for dry extract yield(Y), tannin content(TC), Folin Cicoaulteau reactive phenolic content(PC) and antioxidant activity by ABTS reaction(AA). The highest Y(9.37%), TC(32.40mg/g) and AA(222.72µM Trolox Equivalent/g) were obtained when the extraction was conducted at 60°C, with 80% of the extractor V, St of 10min and 5 batches. The artichoke tincture with highest PC(54.88mg GAE/g) was obtained at 60°C, 60% of V, St of 6min and 5 batches. Analyzing the ANOVA and Pareto diagram for each dependent variable it was possible to observe that none of the independent variables had a significant effect on TC and AA and only the temperature had a significant effect on Y and PC. So we can conclude that the artichoke tinctures obtained using PLE presented a high AA and for the studied range of independent variables, V, St and B do not present significant effect on dependent variables.