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Article history:
Received 11 November 2008
Received in revised form
5 March 2009
Accepted 4 May 2009
The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of drying conditions on the phenolic constituents
and colour of extracts of organically grown white willow and meadowsweet for incorporation into
a functional beverage with potential anti-inammatory properties. The herbs were freeze-dried, airdried, oven or tray-dried at 30 or 70 C. The drying kinetics of the herbs was rst determined. Both
drying temperature and method had a signicant effect (p 0.05) on the drying rate, the samples traydried had a faster drying rate than those oven-dried. Results show that for meadowsweet and willow,
freeze-drying and oven or tray drying at 30 C had no signicant effect on the phenolic constituents (e.g.
total phenols, salicylates, quercetin) or the colour of the extracts in comparison to traditional air-drying.
Although increasing the drying temperature to 70 C resulted in an increase in the drying rate of both
herbs it also led to the loss of some phenolic compounds. Also, the extracts from both herbs dried at 70 C
were signicantly (p 0.05) redder than the other drying methods. Therefore, tray drying these herbs at
low temperatures may reduce drying time without having a signicant effect on the phenolic content
and colour of the extracts.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Drying
Meadowsweet
Willow
Phenolic constituents
1. Introduction
Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria L.) and white willow (Salix
alba) are medicinal plants indigenous to Europe. They have been
traditionally used to treat various ailments due to their antipyretic,
analgesic and anti-inammatory properties (Bruneton, 1995). The
efcacy of these plants is mainly due to their phenolic content,
which includes salicylates. These salicylates such as salicin in willow and salicylaldehyde in meadowsweet are precursors of salicylic
acid. Both meadowsweet and willow played an important role in
the development of aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) as salicylic acid
was rst isolated from the owers of meadowsweet and the bark of
the willow in 1838 (Blumental, Goldberg, & Brinckmann, 2000;
Zeylstra, 1998). Other phenolic compounds present in both herbs
include avonoids (e.g. quercetin) and tannins.
In recent years there has been an increasing consumer demand
for health related food products which has led to development of
novel functional beverages (Katan & De Roos, 2004; Verschuren,
2002). The high phenolic content of these plants and the consumer
drive towards natural products demonstrate that these herbal
extracts would be ideal ingredients for incorporation into functional beverages with potential anti-inammatory properties. Prior
to inclusion into beverages these herbs undergo post-harvest processing, including drying, to extend their shelf-life. Previous studies
have shown that preservation techniques of medicinal herbs may
affect their quality (Harbourne, Jacquier, & ORiordan, 2009;
Julkunen-Tiitto & Sorsa, 2001). For a high quality extract for
incorporation into a beverage the level of phenolics should be
maximized, in particular the non-tannin fractions which will
include the active ingredients with anti-inammatory properties.
Also, the tannin fractions should be minimized as they cause
astringency, an undesirable gustative attribute.
Drying is an important preservation method for plant material,
as it inhibits enzymatic degradation and limits microbial growth.
Ambient air-drying is the traditional technique used to preserve
medicinal herbs as the low temperatures are thought to protect
against degradation of the active components. However, this drying
process is slow and metabolic processes may continue longer
which may lead to quality loss of the plants and subsequently to the
extracts, e.g. colour changes, loss in active ingredients (Fennell,
Light, Sparg, Stafford, & Van Staden, 2004; Keinanen & JulkunenTiitto, 1996). Other methods such as freeze-drying, oven drying and
tray drying have been previously used to preserve medicinal herbs
(Keinanen & Julkunen-Tiitto, 1996; Tanko, Carrier, Soskhansanj, &
M Me
expkt
Mo Me
Drying rate
Mtdt Mt
dt
(1)
(2)
where M, Me, Mo, Mt, Mtdt, are the moisture content, equilibrium
moisture content, initial moisture content, moisture content at t
1469
1470
0.30
1.0
0.25
0.8
0.20
0.6
0.15
0.4
0.05
0.2
0.0
70C
0.00
500
1.8
1000
1500
Time (min)
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
Plant
Drying treatment
k (103 min1)
Equilibrium moisture
content (%)
Meadowsweet
FD
AD
OD30
OD70
TD30
TD70
2.0 0.3
2.0 0.2
14 4
4.0 0.3
20 3
9.6 0.3
9.9 0.7
8.3 0.2
2.2 0.7
93
73
Willow
FD
AD
OD30
OD70
TD30
TD70
5.0 0.1
2.6 0.1
16 5
5.6 0.6
30 8
1.0 0.1
7.8 0.2
6.6 0.1
3.3 0.2
7.4 0.4
2.8 0.1
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
0.10
30C
The colour of willow and meadowsweet extracts was determined using a Chroma meter CR-300 (Minolta Ltd, Milton Keynes,
UK). Hunter Lab scale was used with L*, a* and b* axes expressing
the lightness, redness-greenness and blueness-yellowness respectively. To ascertain the signicance of changes of colour the hue
angle (H ) and chroma (C*) were calculated from a* and b* colour
coordinates according to McGuire (1992). Hue angle is dened as
a colour wheel with red-purple at an angle of 0 , yellow at 90 ,
bluish-green at 180 and blue at 270 .
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
1800
Time (mins)
Fig. 1. Moisture content (d.b.) of meadowsweet (triangles) and willow bark (circles) as
a function of drying time at a temperature of 30 C. Open symbols represent tray
drying (OD30) and closed symbols represent oven drying (TD30). (Note: broken lines
represent the behaviour predicted by the kinetic model.)
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
FD
AD
OD30
OD70
TD30
TD70
TD30
TD70
Drying Condition
b
Phenols (mg/g GAE d.b.)
1471
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
FD
AD
OD30
OD70
Drying condition
Fig. 3. Effect of drying condition on the tannins ( ) and non-tannins () of (a)
meadowsweet and (b) willow bark extracts. Freeze-dried (FD), air-dried (AD), ovendried at 30 C (OD30), oven-dried at 70 C (OD70), tray-dried at 30 C (TD30), traydried at 70 C (TD70).
Table 2
Phenolic groups in meadowsweet and willow extracts dried under different conditions as a percentage of the total phenols (mg/g d.b.).
Plant
Drying treatment
Flavonoids (%)
Meadowsweet
FD
AD
OD30
OD70
TD30
TD70
112 2a
119 8a
115 8a
110 6a
119 9a
110 8a
24 1a
23 1a
24 1a
25 1a
23 1a
23.2 0.3a
32 2a
30 1a
30 3ab
25 1c
31 2a
26 2bc
34 3b
37.0 0.3ab
38 3a
36 1ab
34 1b
36 3ab
10 2cd
9 1cd
8 2d
14 1ab
12 1bc
15 1a
Willow
FD
AD
OD30
OD70
TD30
TD70
62 3a
83 1a
78 8a
68 9a
72 4a
67 6a
14 2x
14 2x
14 2x
19 3x
16 1x
14 3x
60 6x
57 1x
58 5x
43 5y
53 7xy
49 3xy
6 3x
3 2x
6 1x
8 2x
6 4x
5 1x
20 8x
26 4x
23 3x
31 6x
25 9x
33 2x
ac, x, y
Mean values standard deviation represented by the same letters within the same column are not signicantly different at p 0.05. FD: freeze-dried; AD: air-dried;
OD30: oven-dried at 30 C; OD70: oven-dried at 70 C; TD30: tray-dried at 30 C; TD70: tray-dried at 70 C.
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Table 3
Hue angle, chroma and lightness of meadowsweet and willow extracts.
7
6
Plant
bc
ab
c
bc
FD
AD
OD30
OD70
TD30
TD70
Drying Condition
Fig. 4. Effect of the drying condition on the total quercetin content of meadowsweet
extracts. Freeze-dried (FD), air-dried (AD), oven-dried at 30 C (OD30), oven-dried at
70 C (OD70), tray-dried at 30 C (TD30), tray-dried at 70 C (TD70).
ab
Chroma (C*)
FD
AD
OD30
OD70
TD30
TD70
50 2
51 2a
48 1ab
46.8 0.4b
49 1ab
47.1 0.3b
37 7
37 2a
32 2ab
25 2bc
31 5abc
22 2c
13 2a
10 3ab
9 1ab
6 1bc
6 2bc
5.8 0.4c
Willow
FD
AD
OD30
OD70
TD30
TD70
60 0x
59 0x
59 1xy
57 1y
59 1xy
59 2xy
66 3x
62 2xy
59 2y
51 2z
60 1y
48 1z
9 1xy
8 1y
9 1xy
8 1y
9 1xy
12 3x
Lightness (L)
Meadowsweet
bc
Drying treatment
ac, xz
Mean values standard deviation represented by the same letters within the
same column are not signicantly different at p 0.05. FD: freeze-dried; AD: airdried; OD30: oven-dried at 30 C; OD70: oven-dried at 70 C; TD30: tray-dried at
30 C; TD70: tray-dried at 70 C.
followed by those air-dried and oven-dried at 30 C, whereas traydried samples at 30 or 70 C and oven-dried at 70 C had a slightly
lower chroma.
Previous results obtained in our laboratory showed that drying
chamomile owers at high temperatures (80 C) caused a signicant decrease in both hue angle and chroma of the extracts in
comparison to samples freeze-dried or oven-dried at low temperatures (Harbourne et al., 2009). Du Toit and Joubert (1998) have
shown that the drying temperature did not have an effect on the
colour of honeybush tea extracts; however the colour of fermented
honeybush plant material is dark which may make it difcult to
detect a change in colour of the extract. Interestingly, other authors
have reported that higher drying temperatures have an effect on
the colour of plant material. Julkunen-Tiitto and Sorsa (2001)
noticed that willow leaves air-dried at 60 and 90 C turned to
a brownish colour in comparison to leaves air-dried and freezedried possibly due to quinone formation and decomposition of
phenols. Also, Arabhosseini, Huisman, van Boxtel, and Muller
(2007) found that increasing the drying temperature of tarragon
from 45 to 60 C caused a decrease in the hue angle, lightness and
saturation of the dried material.
4. Conclusion
At all drying conditions studied willow bark had a higher drying
rate than aerial parts of meadowsweet. For both herbs the drying
rate increased with drying temperature and tray drying showed
a higher drying rate than oven drying. Although drying at higher
temperatures resulted in shorter drying times it caused a reduction
in the avonoids and resulted in redder extracts. The decrease in
avonoids and corresponding increase in condensed tannins
observed could be probably due to polymerisation during high
temperature drying. Freeze-drying, air-drying and oven or tray
drying of both herbs at 30 C yielded extracts high in phenols,
active ingredients and had a desirable colour for incorporation into
a beverage with potential anti-inammatory properties. Therefore,
tray drying these medicinal herbs at low temperatures may
decrease the drying time without having any major effects on the
total phenols, bioactives and colour of the extracts.
Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the Food Institutional Research
Measure (FIRM) administered by the Department of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food, Republic of Ireland.
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