Question: How is it possible to extract active substances from plants

Jennifer Bates answered on 15 Nov 2016:

Hi,

So the aim of extracting active substances is because often they are either useful to us or we want to test if they will be useful!

Each chemical though has a different property, and what you don’t want to do is extract it and have it made useless by the process. So each substance is treated carefully, and each plant is treated according to the needs of the questions/substance.

The different methods (and there are a lot, so I’m not going to go into all of them, but I’ll add a link to the bottom of this reply for you to a paper on them) all rely on the different chemical properties of the substances, and play to the range of reactions these will have to other chemicals. Samples are also carefully prepared before hand to increase the chances of a good extraction, by washing, drying or even freeze drying, and grinding them up.

This paper reviews a some of the more common methods of extracting active substances, but as it explains at the start, it is all about selecting the right process for the bioactive substance you are working with.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3218439/