A novel surface molecularly imprinted polymer based on the natural biological macromolecule sporopollenin for the specific and efficient adsorption of resveratrol from Polygonum cuspidatum extracts.

Sporopollenin is a natural biological macromolecule consisting of highly cross-linked carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms, with a highly porous structure and multifunctional groups. In this work, a novel surface molecularly imprinted polymer based on magnetically aminated cattail sporopollenin (MACSp-SMIP) was prepared for the specific and efficient adsorption of resveratrol, with the aim of purifying resveratrol from Polygonum cuspidatum extracts. MACSp-SMIP was found to have a porous structure covered with the multi-layered sponge-like imprinted polymers. MACSp-SMIP had a high adsorption capacity for resveratrol (65.77 mg·g) and excellent selectivity (imprinting factor 5.64). The adsorption of resveratrol by MACSp-SMIP was a homogeneous diffusion dominated by chemical adsorption with three stages of external diffusion, internal diffusion, and micropore diffusion. MACSp-SMIP was used as an adsorbent in molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction for the purification of resveratrol from P. cuspidatum extracts, achieving a resveratrol recovery of 94.33 % and a purity of 76.67 % in the final products. MACSp-SMIP maintained a satisfactory recovery of resveratrol (88.18 %) after six cycles. Overall, this work developed a promising biological macromolecule-based adsorbent MACSp-SMIP for the specific and efficient adsorption of resveratrol, and also provided an efficient and simple approach for the selective purification of resveratrol from P. cuspidatum extracts for food/nutraceutical applications.