Chapter 4 - Emerging technologies for the recovery of bioactive compounds from saffron species

Abstract

Saffron, known as golden spice, is highly rich in bioactive compounds mainly crocin, safranal, and picrocrocin having various health benefits. To avail of the total benefits of saffron bioactive compounds, these have to be extracted for supplementation in functional foods and pharmaceutical purposes. The conventional methods applied for the saffron extraction viz. maceration, steam distillation, and soxhlet extraction have certain limitations such as large consumption of time, energy, and solvent; extract impurity; low quality and efficiency; not eco-friendly, etc. These extraction technologies are detrimental for saffron bioactive compounds specifically crocin, which is the most abundant and important component of saffron. Therefore, advanced technologies mainly nonthermal processes have emerged for the plant extractions that are environment-friendly; safe; consuming less time, energy, and solvent; highly efficient; highly selective; and less detrimental to bioactive compounds. These include but are not limited to supercritical fluid extraction, subcritical water extraction, ultrasonication-assisted extraction, microwave-assisted extraction, emulsion liquid membranes extraction, pulsed electric field extraction, enzyme-assisted extraction, and high-pressure extraction. These advanced technologies can be combined to achieve the target compounds with higher efficiency. However, these emerging extraction technologies particularly emulsion liquid membrane extraction, enzyme-assisted extraction, pulsed electric field extraction, and high-pressure extraction are yet to be fully explored for the recovery of saffron bioactive compounds.