Development of RP HPLC-PDA method for simultaneous quantitative analysis of Inoscavin A and Meshimakobnol A and application on some Phellinus mushroom species.

Phellinus igniarius, a medicinal mushroom containing many active ingredients with health benefits, can be applied in functional food. At present, the quantification of the main active ingredients from higher fungi (Ganoderma, Phellinus…) materials from different growing sources is a mandatory requirement to standardize the input resources of pharmaceutical and food production. Our study's aims are to perfect the RP HPLC-PDA method for quantitative analysis of Inoscavin A and Meshimakobnol A which are two main active ingredients present in Phellinus mushroom. In this analytical method, a C18-HPLC column and the mixture of methanol and formic acid solutions (pH = 2.2) are used to analyze and elute the active substances with the column activity parameters being the concentration gradient. This perfect method was tested for system suitability, repeatability, intermediate precision, recovery, and linear curve calibration to validate the method. After validation, the perfected RP HPLC-PDA method was applied to analyze eight samples of Phellinus and three samples of Ganoderma mushroom category. This method can be the basis for classifying between Phellinus and some other medicinal mushrooms.

Research on optimization of spray drying conditions, characteristics of anthocyanins extracted from Hibiscus sabdariffa L. flower, and application to marshmallows.

Anthocyanin, a main-colored bioactive compound found in Hibiscus sabdariffa L., is well-known for a varied range of applications as food additives in foodstuff, and natural colorants in food, pharmaceutical, and printing industries. The study aimed to find out the suitable conditions for the spray-drying process to obtain anthocyanin powder from the extract as well as characterized the powder. In addition, the obtained powder was applied to marshmallows and determined the acceptability of appearance, quality, and scavenging capacity of the candy. The carrier of maltodextrin and gum arabic was selected for spray-drying, which had optimal conditions at 144°C and 7 mL/min, resulting in 100.22 mg/g anthocyanin content with an encapsulation efficiency of 93.87%. The obtained anthocyanin has appropriate moisture of 5.14%, quite appropriate bulk density, and tapped density, it also was high solubility, and poor flowability but easy compression. The shape of the particle by SEM analysis was low particle size (2-10 µm), wrinkled, unequal spherical size, rough surfaces with indentations, and slight cracks. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrum of the sample had very low crystallinity and diffuse wide peaks revealing that anthocyanin still exists inside maltodextrin particles. The FT-IR spectrum had oscillations of characteristic groups of anthocyanin structure. Marshmallow samples added 5% anthocyanin powder gained high acceptability of appearance and maintained the scavenging capacity (DPPH) with an IC50 value of 7368.31 ppm after a month of storage.