I had extracted fresh needles of Pinus kesiya with different solvents but the yield of extractive material (w/w)obtained from the aqueous extract was the highest. I was wondering what might be the reason for this and which classes of phytochemicals in Pine needles are best extracted with water. Please help.
Dear Moumita,
can You describe the extraction conditions? I mean solvents You used, temperature, extraction technique.
solvents used included pet ether, methanol and of course water...i undertook sequential extraction using a soxhlet apparatus at temperature of 55 deg
It is known the hydrocarbons are not good solvents for needles extraction - they can retrieve only lipophilic compounds, such as carotenoids and lipids. As for comparison of water and alcohols, you should take into account the ability of water to dissolve polysaccharides. I think this class of compounds can predominate in aqueous extracts.
Check for organic acids, lignan-glycosides, stilbene glycosides, free sugars, polysaccharides (as mentioned by Dmitry Kosyakov), oligomeric procyanidins, to mention a few
The polar solvents (such as water) will contain the hydrophilic compounds including flavonoids, sugars, organic acids etc. It is no surprise that the aqueous extract gives a high yield.
Take 10mg sample, run a 1H-NMR in D2O, using water suppressing pulse program, it may give you the clues.
Thank you so much for your answers and suggestions...will definitely perform the biochemical tests for the aforementioned classes of compounds.
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