Simultaneous extraction of flavonoids and saponins from functional food via basic DES-assisted mechanochemical extraction

An efficient, green, and novel basic deep eutectic solvent (DES)-assisted mechanochemical extraction method, combined with ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry, is proposed for simultaneous extraction and determination of target compounds from functional food. Several parameters are investigated using single - factor optimization, and response surface methodology is employed to determine the optimum extraction conditions. The conditions include a grinding time of 316.29 s, 83.72 μL of DES (K 2 CO 3 and glycerol), and vortex time of 2.408 min. The developed method provides good linearity (R 2  > 0.9958), stable intraday and interday precision ranging from 0.07 % to 3.31 %, high sensitivity (LODs <20.83 ng/mL), and acceptable accuracy with recoveries of 83.75 %–102.02 %. Moreover, satisfactory greenness (0.71) and practicality (72.5) are achieved in terms of the Analytical Greenness metric and the blue applicability grade index. The proposed method notably contributes to the simultaneous extraction and detection of flavonoids and saponins in astragali radix.