Background: Embelia ribes Burm is widely used medicinal plant for the treatment of different types of disorders in the Indian traditional systems of medicine.
Objective: The present work was aimed to optimize the extraction parameters of embelin from E. ribes fruits and also to quantify embelin content in different extracts of the plant.
Materials and methods: Optimization of extraction parameters such as solvent: drug ratio, temperature and time were carried out by response surface methodology (RSM). Quantitative estimation of embelin in different extracts of E. ribes fruits was done through high performance liquid chromatography.
Results: The optimal conditions determined for extraction of embelin through RSM were; extraction time (27.50 min), extraction temperature 45°C and solvent: drug ratio (8:1). Under the optimized conditions, the embelin yield (32.71%) was equitable to the expected yield (31.07%, P > 0.05). These results showed that the developed model is satisfactory and suitable for the extraction process of embelin. The analysis of variance showed a high goodness of model fit and the accomplishment of the RSM method for improving embelin extraction from the fruits of E. ribes.
Conclusion: It is concluded that this may be a useful method for the extraction and quantitative estimation of embelin from the fruits of E. ribes.
Keywords: Embelia ribes; response surface methodology; reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography; ultrasonic-assisted extraction.