Application of Emerging Cell Disintegration Techniques for the Accelerated Recovery of Curcuminoids from Curcuma longa

Abstract

Curcuminoids, the bioactive compounds with many beneficial effects on human health, exist in Curcuma longa (turmeric). In the present study, the impact of different cell disintegration techniques to enhance total curcuminoid recovery (TC) from fresh and dried turmeric was investigated. The impact of thermal pretreatment (TP), ultrasound pretreatment (UP), enzyme pretreatment (EP), and pulsed electric field pretreatment (PEF) on the recovery of curcumin (CUR), demethoxycurcumin (DMC), and bis-demethoxycurcumin (BDMC) from fresh and dried turmeric were studied. The cell disintegration index (Zp) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis of curcuminoids were performed to evaluate the efficiency of the applied techniques. With fresh turmeric, the highest curcuminoid recovery was 83.6 mg/g dry basis with EP. The highest structural tissue damage was obtained with UP achieving a cell disintegration level of 92.5%. The technology with the highest time-saving and low specific energy input was PEF with a total curcuminoid recovery of 80.9 mg/g dry basis. Working with dried turmeric, the drying required high specific energy input for 72 h at 50 °C; however, the untreated dried sample reached 125.3 mg/g dry basis of TC without further pretreatment after drying.

Impact of Cell Disintegration Techniques on Curcumin Recovery

“…The low-frequency and high-frequency values were chosen in advance, and they varied on the type of materials. In terms of turmeric cell measurement, these values were 5.5 kHz at low frequency and 1.4 MHz at high frequency [33].…”

“…On the other hand, the low content of xylans and cellulose in the turmeric rhizomes do not inhibit the curcumin extraction [31]. The pectin content in the turmeric rhizome is 6.3% w/w [32], and with pectinase treatment, the curcumin recovery could be increased by 53% compared to the untreated sample [33]. In turmeric plant cells, starch and pectin have a noticeable effect on curcumin recovery; numerous studies focused on these components to enhance the efficiency of the extraction process.…”

“…The effect of cell disintegration techniques on turmeric cell structure is shown in Table 2. In order to evaluate the efficiency of pre-treatment on curcumin recovery, cell disintegration index (CDI) was used to reveal the damage of turmeric cells before and after the treatment [33,41,42].…”

“…In theory, p 0 = 0 for an intact tissue and p 0 = 1 for a maximally disintegrated tissue. In most cases, the value of p max was estimated by measurements of freeze-thawed tissue's electrical conductivity for two rounds [33]. After such treatment, the electrical conductivity of tissue attained its maximal value.…”

“…Especially, the cell plant destruction was also promoted for hours after the treatment stopped [48]. The CDI measurement offers numerous advantages for evaluating the pretreatment effect on the turmeric plant cells [33].…”