It has been an emerging interest among researchers to develop novel non-thermal extraction methods to increase the extraction efficiency while maintaining higher amounts of heat-sensitive components. Cold plasma is considered to be a novel non-thermal technology that is currently applied to inactivate pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms on the surface of food. Cold plasma possesses strong surface etching ability due to many reactive species including ions, electrons, radicals, and radiation generated. Thus, cold plasma has great potential to be applied to assist food processing, such as extraction. Ginseng is a traditional herbal medicine that has been used therapeutically for more than 2000 years. Ginsenosides are the main biologically active components in ginseng. In this work, cold plasma assisted extraction technology is developed using ginseng as modeling system, from which the efficiency of this method is evaluated. Fresh ginseng was sliced into pieces and then randomly divided into control and treatment groups. The texture, color, and surface morphologies of ginseng samples were observed using texture analyzer, colorimeter, and scanning electron microscope. To extract the bioactive components from ginseng, each group was ground to powder and incubated in 70% ethanol for two hours at room temperature. The extracts were filtered, and the concentration of bioactive components were determined by HPLC. The surface of the plasma-treated ginseng is much more course, more hydrophobic, and harder texture than the untreated sample due to the etching and chemical modification ability of cold plasma. In addition, the concentration of ginsenosides extracted from plasma-treated ginseng is significantly higher compared to ginseng without cold plasma treatment, which demonstrates that cold plasma assisted extraction could indeed enhance the yield of ginsenosides. This work will surely lay an important foundation for the future application of cold plasma technology in extraction processing.

Cold plasma treatment caused surface etching increased the yield of ginsenosides extraction

256th National Meeting (2018)

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