Extraction of triterpene acids from loquat leaves via a novel hydrophobic deep eutectic solvent screened by COSMO-SAC model

Triterpene acids (TTAs) have promising applications in functional food, medicine and other fields. Here, ultrasonic-assisted hydrophobic deep eutectic solvent (HDES) extraction was employed to gain TTAs from loquat leaves. Combining COSMO-SAC model prediction with experimental verification，the HDES, composed of thymol and benzyl alcohol (molar ratio 2:1), was proved to have the highest extraction ability for TTAs. The preliminarily optimized extraction conditions were solid to solvent ratio 1:10 (g/g), temperature 60 °C and extraction time 60 min. Under these conditions, the extraction yield of ursolic acid (the main component of loquat leaf TTAs) was 17.769 ± 0.799 mg/g dry loquat leaf. HDES and TTAs were recovered from HDES extracting solution via gradient elution (60% and 80% ethanol aqueous solution, respectively) based on C18 reverse-phase silica gel column chromatography under low pressure (0.5 MPa). Recovered HDES could be reused for extracting TTAs from loquat leaves directly and had a similar extraction performance compared to fresh HDES. The purity of the obtained crude TTAs sample was 81.18% based on the total contents of maslinic acid (MA), corosolic acid (CA), oleanolic acid (OA) and ursolic acid (UA), with a mass ratio of 11:26:10:53. Crude TTAs sample was further separated by C18 reverse-phase silica gel column chromatography using 80% ethanol aqueous solution as mobile phase under high pressure (15 Mpa). By this mean, CA sample with 69.30% purity (MA to CA mass ratio 7:18) and UA sample with 93.94% purity (OA to UA mass ratio 4:21) were obtained. The in vitro antioxidant ability order of the attained TTAs samples was CA sample > crude TTAs sample > UA sample. This study laid a good scientific basis for applying HDES and C18 reverse-phase silica gel column chromatography in the bioactive component extraction and separation fields. It also provided theoretical basis and technical support for obtainment and utilization of high-purity loquat leaf TTAs in the fields of medicine, functional food, cosmetics and so on.