Traditional and Advanced Extraction Methods of Bioactive Compounds: A Review

Extraction techniques play a crucial role in the isolation, purification, and characterization of bioactive natural products from either plant, microbial, or marine sources. These methods enable the recovery of therapeutic compounds such as alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenoids, phenolics, and essential oils with high yield and purity that found applications in medicine, pharmacy, agriculture, and chemical industries. This review discussed the traditional extraction techniques (maceration, percolation, infusion, decoction, Soxhlet, and digestion) which remain widely used due to their simplicity and effectiveness, especially for heat-stable compounds. The review also examined the modern green extraction technologies such as ultrasound-assisted extraction, microwave-assisted extraction, enzyme-assisted extraction, pressurized hot water extraction, and pulsed electric field extraction which offers significant advantages like reduced solvent consumption, shorter extraction times, enhanced selectivity, and improved preservation of thermo-labile constituents. The review further explained the solvents for extraction and the preference and choice of extraction technique which largely depends on factors such as the nature of the raw material, target compounds, solvent polarity, and desired efficiency. The advancements in extraction technologies continue to improve the sustainability, safety, and analytical precision of natural product research, contributing to drug discovery and delivery, improve healthcare development, and other agricultural and industrial applications