ANTIMICROBIAL AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF EMBLICA EXTRACTS OBTAINED BY SUPERCRITICAL CARBON DIOXIDE EXTRACTION AND METHANOL EXTRACTION XIAOLI LIU 1,2 , MOUMING ZHAO 1,3 , JINSHUI WANG 1 and WEI LUO 1 1 College of Light Industry and Food Science South China University of Technology Guangzhou 510640, China 2 Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Light Industry Guangdong University of Technology Guangzhou 510006, China Accepted for Publication August 6, 2007 ABSTRACT This study is aimed to evaluate the antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of two extracts of emblica (Phyllanthus emblica L.) obtained by supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) and methanol extraction. The SFE extract showed strong antimicrobial activity against all microorganisms tested, whereas the methan- olic extract showed low activity against Staphylococcus aureus and fungi. In contrast, the methanolic extract exhibited significantly higher antioxidant activity than the SFE extract. The SFE extract was analyzed by gas chroma- tography with mass spectrometric detector. Thirty compounds were tentatively identified, representing 99.67% of the volatile components. b-Bourbonene, teracosane, palmitic acid, thymol, b-caryophyllene and undecane were the major compounds. The methanolic extract was subjected to separation and purification using reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. Kaempferol 3-b-D-glucopyranoside (1), kaempferol (2), quercetin (3), isoco- rilagin (4) and geraniin (5) respectively, were identified by spectral methods, 1 H and 13 C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, ultraviolet-visible spectro- photometry and mass spectroscopy, and comparison with literatures. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS The study can be considered as the first report on the in vitro antimicro- bial and antioxidant properties of supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) and 3 Corresponding author. TEL: +86-20-87113914; FAX: +86-20-87114954; EMAIL: femmzhao@ scut.edu.cn Journal of Food Biochemistry 33 (2009) 307–330. © 2009, The Author(s) Journal compilation © 2009, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 307