Application of Ionic Liquid-Based Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction of Five Phenolic Compounds from Fig (Ficus carica L.) for HPLC-UV

Abstract

Ionic liquid-based ultrasonic-assisted extraction (IL-UAE) was successfully developed to extract the known phenolics gallic acid, chlorogenic acid, rutin, psoralen, and bergapten present in the leaves, pulps, and peels of Ficus carica L. In this work, the proposed method was evaluated in comparison with regular ultrasonic-assisted extraction in which methanol was the extractant and exhibited higher efficiency. Moreover, ionic liquids with different cations were investigated and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazole hexafluorophosphate solution was selected as the optimal extractant at concentration of 1.0 mol L−1. The corresponding extraction parameters including extraction solvent, the concentration of [BMIM][PF6], solid–liquid ratio (g mL−1), ultrasonic extraction time, and extraction temperature were optimized. The phenolics were then determined by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Under the optimized conditions, the content of gallic acid, chlorogenic acid, rutin, psoralen, and bergapten in leaves, pulps, and peels of F. carica L. was 12.67–37.16, 14.75–90.07, 107.91–222.37, 2.59–67.83, and 1.99–20.21 μg/0.1 g, respectively. This study suggests that IL-UAE is a rapid, simple, and green preparation technique.