The Brazilian ginseng Pfaffia glomerata (Spreng.) Pedersen belongs to the Amaranthaceae family and has as its main component β-ecdysone, a phytoecdysteroid, found in the roots, stem, flowers and leaves of the plant. In the last years sustainability and the environment concern were decisive for the emerging supercritical fluid extraction and pressurized fluid extraction technologies to obtain biocomposites from the plant. These extraction technologies use solvents (CO2, ethanol and water) and uses as controllable parameters pressure, flow, time and temperature. The combination of these factors generates atoxicity, no residue in the final extract and have a reduced energy cost and an excellent extraction yield. This work reviews the literature from 2007 to 2020 on the use of clean technology to obtain chemical biocomposites of interest in the areas of biology, agronomy, food and pharmaceutics. It is was concluded that the supercritical fluid extraction and pressurized liquid extraction extracts were very efficient in obtaining β-ecdysone, since both presents low energy consumption, uses environmentally correct solvents which reduces harmful effects on the environment. Finally, to choose the best technology for extraction of other biocomposites depends on the chemical compound of interest.

The aim of this study was to characterize the essential oil (EO) of red aroeira seeds and to evaluate their antimicrobial and antioxidant activities. The EO was extracted by hydrodistillation in a Clevenger-type device with a yield of 9.83% ± 0.31%; it was characterized by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to determine its physical-chemical characteristics. The EO showed acidity of 0.2814 mg KOH g-1, a 1.4763 ± 0.0014 refraction index and density of 0.9365 ± 0.01656 g cm-3. Through the FTIR, the absorption bands of the EO indicated the presence of the following components: limonene, delta -3-carene, a pinene and myrcene. By GC-MS the major compounds found were 4(10)-thujene (44.97%) α-Pinene (20.42%), o-Cymene (12.76%) and p-Menth-1-en-4-ol, (R)-(-)-(6.74%). Antimicrobial activity was evaluated against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. In the microdilution method, no inhibiting activity was found in the tested concentrations (serial dilutions from 25.6 to 0.05 μL mL-1) and in the disk diffusion method, inhibition halos were observed only when pure EO was added. Antioxidant activity was evaluated by DPPH (oxidation-reduction reaction) and FRAP (iron ion reduction). In the DPPH, the obtained result was 0.01119 ± 0.0001 μmol g-1 and in FRAP, 13.813 ± 0.02187 μmol g-1, which demonstrates antioxidant activity in the two evaluated methods, indicating the possible application of the essential oil of red aroeira seeds as a natural antioxidant agent.