Polymethoxyflavones from citrus peel: advances in extraction methods, biological properties, and potential applications

Abstract

Citrus peel, as an effective component of citrus by-products, contains a large number of natural active components, including pectin, vitamins, dietary fiber, essential oil, phenolic compounds, flavonoids, and so on. With the development of the circular economy, citrus peel has attracted extensive concern in the food industry. The exploitation of citrus peel would assist in excavating potential properties and alleviating the environmental burden. Polymethoxyflavones (PMFs) exist almost in citrus peel, which have remarkable biological activities including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and anti-obesity. Therefore, PMFs from citrus peel have the potential to develop as dietary supplements in the near future. Collectively, it is essential to take action to optimize the extraction conditions of PMFs and make the most of the extracts. This review mainly compiles several extraction methods and bioactivities of PMFs from citrus peel and introduces different applications including food processing, pharmaceutical industry, and plant rhizosphere to develop better utilization of citrus PMFs.

Graphical abstract

HIGHLIGHTS

• Polymethoxyflavones (PMFs) represent sustainable bioactive compounds that profit for circular economy.

• Valorization of citrus peel PMFs will bring value-added environmental benefits.

• Novel techniques improve property and extraction efficiency of PMFs.

• PMFs obtained from citrus peel could be applied to tea or bakery food processing and pharmaceutical industry.

Keywords:

• Application
• biological properties
• extraction methods
• polymethoxyflavones

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the key program of Hunan Provincial Department of science and technology (2020WK2020), the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province of China (2020JJ4278 and 2022JJ50306), Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (21A0161), Central South University of Forestry and Technology Introduced Talent Research Startup Fund (2021YJ034 and 2021YJ014), and Program for Science & Technology Innovation Platform/Talents of Hunan Province (2019TP1029).