Phenol Profiling and Nutraceutical Potential of spp. Leaf Extracts Obtained with Ultrasound and Microwave Assisted Techniques.

In recent years, agricultural and industrial residues have attracted a lot of interest in the recovery of phytochemicals used in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries. In this paper, a study on the recovery of phenol compounds from spp. leaves is presented. Ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) and microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) have been used with alcoholic and hydroalcoholic solvents. Methanolic UAE was the most successful technique for extracting phenols from leaves, and we used on leaves from and cultivated in Italy. The extracts were then characterized as regards to the antioxidant properties by in vitro assays and the phenol profiling by a high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detector (HPLC-DAD). Chlorogenic acid and rutin were the main phenol compounds, but considerable differences have been observed between the samples of the two species. For example, cryptochlorogenic acid was found only in samples, while quercetin-3-O-rutinoside-7-O-glucoside and quercetin-3-O-sophoroside-7-O-rhamnoside only in leaves. Finally, multivariate statistical analysis techniques applied to the phenol content allowed us to differentiate samples from different spp. The results of this study confirm that the extraction is a crucial step in the analytical procedure and show that leaves represent an interesting source of antioxidant compounds, with potential use in the nutraceutical field.