Optimization Study of Marmelosin (Imperatorin) Extraction from Aegle marmelos Using Three Phase Partitioning

Abstract

Aegle marmelos is a prominent tree in Indian Ayurveda and occupies an important place in Ayurvedic, Unani and Siddha system of Indian medicine due to its ethnomedicinal values. The current work demonstrates the use of three-phase partitioning (TPP) for the first time to isolate and purify a potent bioactive compound marmelosin from A. marmelos fruit. Marmelosin exhibits antibacterial, anticancer, hepatoprotective and antidiabetic activity. Here, various experimental conditions were optimized for TPP, and comparison was made between conventional techniques like Soxhlet and batch extraction. The impact of various TPP parameters such as ammonium sulphate concentration, solute to solvent ratio, time, slurry to t-butanol, and pH on the yield of marmelosin was studied. TPP shows maximum marmelosin yield of 0.494 mg/g at the optimized condition as solute to solvent ratio 1:50 , time 2.5 h, ammonium sulphate concentration 30 w/v %, slurry to t- butanol ratio 1:1, pH 5. Conventional techniques, i.e., Soxhlet and batch extraction, resulted in yield of 0.250 mg/g in 7 h and 0.150 mg/g respectively in 4 h. Thus, TPP enhances the yield as well as reduces the extraction time that shows it is a simple, effective, promising, and cost-effective technique for the extraction of marmelosin thereby reducing the processing time.

Key words:

• Aegle marmelos
• three-phase partitioning
• marmelosin
• batch extraction
• Soxhlet extraction