Olive Leaf Processing for Infusion Purposes

Potassium Hydroxide Extraction of Polyphenols from Olive Leaves: Effect on Color and Acrylamide Formation in Black Ripe Olives

Olive leaves are generated in large quantities in olive oil and table olive factories. This waste is currently used for multiple purposes, one of them being the extraction of bioactive substances, in particular phenolic compounds. The aims of this study were (i) to obtain a new polyphenolic extract from potassium hydroxide (KOH) -treated olive leaves; and (ii) to reduce acrylamide formation in black olives by using this extract. The results showed that olive leaves and leafless branches of the Manzanilla cultivar treated with 10 g/L KOH provide a solution that, concentrated under vacuum, had >6000 mg/L hydroxytyrosol and >2000 mg/L of hydroxytyrosol 4-glucoside. Moreover, the residual material generated after the treatment with KOH could be used for agronomic purposes, due to its high potassium content. The employment of this non-bitter extract during the darkening step of black ripe olive processing then resulted in darker fruits with higher potassium content. Likewise, the addition of the extract into the packing brine reduced the acrylamide formation by up to 32%, although this effect was batch-dependent. KOH olive extract could be useful for the reduction in acrylamide in black ripe olives along with the enrichment of this product in phenolic compounds and potassium.

Oleuropein in olive leaf, branch, and stem extracts: stability and biological activity in human cervical carcinoma and melanoma cells

Olive leaves as a main byproduct of olive oil and fruit industry are a valuable source of phytochemicals such as polyphenols, with multiple biomedical effects. Apart from leaves, olive branches and stems make up a significant amount of olive waste. It is well known that the drying process and long-term storage affect the stability and concentration of polyphenols present in raw materials. For that matter, two different means of storing olive waste, at room temperature and +4 °C, were compared by determining the content of the polyphenol oleuropein (OLE) in olive leaf, branch, and stem extracts (LE, BE, and SE) by HPLC-DAD method. Total phenols (TPC), o-diphenols (o-DPC), and total flavonoids (TFC) content in extracts were assessed by UV-Vis measurements. LE prepared from leaves stored at +4 °C had the highest OLE content, 30.7 mg g-1 of dry extract (DE). SE from stems stored at +4 °C was the richest in TPC and TFC (193 mg GAE/g DE and 82.9 mg CE/g DE, respectively), due to the higher purity of the extract. The biological activity of extracts was determined on cervical cancer (HeLa), melanoma (A375), metastatic melanoma (A375M) tumor cell lines, and on spontaneously immortalized cell line of keratinocytes (HaCaT), using the MTT assay. The data show that all extracts had a similar dose-dependent effect on cell viability in HeLa cells, while the effect of LE on melanoma A375 and A375M, and HaCaT cells was cell-line dependent.