Obtaining prebiotic carbohydrates and beta-ecdysone from Brazilian ginseng by subcritical water extraction

- Subcritical water extraction was a suitable process to extract bioactive compounds.
- Economic feasibility of the process was estimated.
- Brazilian ginseng roots are a new source of prebiotic carbohydrates.
- Beta-ecdysone was extracted from Brazilian ginseng roots and aerial parts.

Subcritical water extraction (SWE) is one of the most promising modern extraction techniques for isolation of bioactive compounds from plant materials. Fructooligosaccharides (FOS) and beta-ecdysone were obtained from Brazilian ginseng roots (BGR) and aerial parts (BGA) by SWE aiming to use the entire plant in a biorefinery approach. The BGR extracts showed a FOS content of up to 8.8 g/100 g of extract and a beta-ecdysone content of up to 0.7 g/100 g of extract. BGA extracts showed a beta-ecdysone content of 0.3 g/100 g of extract. An economic evaluation showed that the manufacturing of BGR for beta-ecdysone production had a good profitability with a short payback time of 1.43 years, while BGA could be used as fuel to supply the energetic requirements of the process and then, enable the utilization of the entire plant.Industrial relevanceThis study reports the subcritical water extraction (SWE) of fructooligosaccharides (FOS) and beta-ecdysone from Brazilian ginseng roots (BGR) and aerial parts (BGA) aiming the use of the entire plant material in a biorefinery approach. SWE is a promising innovative technology to recover bioactive compounds from plant materials due to the easy manipulation of the dielectric constant of water. The economic evaluation of the process showed the great profitability of SWE to obtain bioactive compounds from Brazilian ginseng. These results demonstrated that SWE is a green, fast and economic process for extracting bioactive compounds from plant materials and can be successfully applied on industrial scale.