Bud-derivates from woody ornamental trees and shrubs: The FINNOVER project

FINNOVER (“Innovative strategies for the development of cross-border green supply chains”, ALCOTRA project 2017-2020 Italia-Francia, Finnover n° 1198) is an Alcotra Italy-France trans-frontier project, whose aim is the “green” innovation of different agro-industrial chains in terms of circular economy and, particularly, the eco-sustainable extraction and formulation of natural bioactive phytocomplexes in plant-based ingredients and/or dietary supplements (botanicals). Gemmotherapy is a branch of phytotherapy that uses meristematic fresh tissues of trees and plants, such as buds or young sprouts, by cold maceration in solvents (i.e., ethanol and glycerol). In the European Community this category of natural products is classified and commercialized as plant food supplements. The valorisation of bud by-products represents an interesting innovation in this field, since the phenological stage of buds or young sprouts extremely limits their collection period over time, making them quite expensive compared to other botanicals. This research aims to explore the potential usage of Pulsed Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction (PUAE) both for the bud-derivative production, comparing the obtained extracts with the traditional glyceric macerates, and to exploit the by-products of their supply chain. PUAE, an eco-sustainable and relatively low-cost procedure, has been employed aiming at increasing the extraction efficiency and at reducing the extraction-time. The lab-scale experimental conditions (i.e., ultrasounds amplitude, duty-cycle and time) have been optimized on Ribes nigrum L. buds by Design of Experiment (DoE) technique. The same solvent and solid/solvent rate of the commercial glyceric macerates have been used both for the buds and for their by-products. The quality and the quantity comparisons with the glyceric macerates were obtained by untargeted phytochemical fingerprints by UV-Vis and Fluorescence spectroscopy followed by targeted phytochemical fingerprints by HPLC.