From powdered mushrooms you can do the extraction, there should be no problems

I second Laura. But what you can do is to use both polar as well as non-polar solvents for extraction, which will give you fractions for different solvents and then the concentrated extracts could be analysed using specrtoscopic techniques. Doing this will give you an idea about all the constituents in the plant.

Hope this helps!

Best regards,

Abhijit

thank you! Will search on that. I'm just thinking if the powdered mushrooms phytochemical would be effective as the extracted one...

Hi Joan, are you referring to consuming the mushroom in powedered form versus consuming it in its extracted form (decoction, polar and nonpolar extractracts)? If so, it will definitely vary...1) substances from your mushroom are either soluble or insoluble or semisoluble in water.... the state of its polarity might be one of the factors that will control its bioactivity. 2) some bioactive substances from your mushroom might be attached to big fatty acid molecules which is natural for most substances especially if the material will be consumed in its unextracted form (powedered material). fatty acids may inhibit the efficacy of bioactive substances 3) the digestive system of humans or your animal model may not be that sophisticated to separate these substances from fatty acid. In my opinion, you might see more interesting results using substances from extracts obtained from your mushroom.

Hi Joan, even if you want to analyse powder, you will have to dissolve it in some solvent, or in a simpler language, extract the compounds in that solvent. As Dennis has pointed in his comment above, using different solvents will give you a number of compounds (polar, semi-polar, no-polar) and hence a holistic idea of the compounds present in your mushroom sample. In general, extraction and analysis depends upon your compounds of interest and the kind of bioactivity which you are looking for. Hope it helps.

Best

Rohitash

Hello Joan, I think you want to test your powder for presence or absence of specific constituents. If it is so then you can perform some of the basic phytochemical screening tests such as powder analysis (Microscopic) and chemical tests such as Dragendorff's, Barfoed's, Shinoda, Mayer's, Wagner test, etc. For that in some test you need to first extract small quantity of powder with specific solvent. But these tests will give you some basic idea about constituents present.

It is always important to form an hypothesis about what you think is in the plant powder that you want to quantify. Once you know what you are looking for, then you can decide on a solvent that will bring that component into solution. Quantifying method depends on the chemical nature of what you are looking for. Are you looking to purify a component or just to fine out how much is present in the sample? Spectroscopy is useful if you just want to demonstrated that the component is present. If you are looking for organics, TLC and gas chromatography is useful. Water soluble components are separable in column chromatography. In short, a lot more information is needed to answer your question.

You will have to extract it in some solvent to analyze it. But you can use wide range of solvents based on polarity to cover larger variety of phytoconstituents. Or if you have a specific target group, you might want to extract them and analyze.