Mini Review: Extraction of Allicin from Allium sativum using Subcritical Water Extraction

Abstract

Garlic or Allium sativum have a lot of health benefits, especially on reducing blood pressure, fighting against the common cold and improve cholesterol in which lower the risk of heart attack problem. It is considered as one of the best disease preventive foods as it exhibits high biological activity when the fresh garlic is cut or crushed that attributed to sulfur compounds and thiosulphates. One of the active compounds in thiosulphates group namely allicin. Generally, allicin is not presence in garlic and to produce the allicin, enzyme alliinase is needed to activate with the presence of water. The common technique to extract allicin is using solvent extraction, UAE, PLE and SCCO2. The drawbacks of using these techniques including the use of organic solvent, long extraction time, and required two type of processes which is enzymatic process and extraction process. SWE is introduced to enhance the conventional process with high purity of product, water poses a mimic the properties of organic solvent and the enzymatic and extraction process undergo in one system. Therefore, this mini review aims to discuss the allicin in garlic, the literature on allicin extraction, the principle of SWE, and the application of SWE on allicin extraction.