Reducing toxic constituents of ginkgolic acid content and improving bioactive flavonoid content from Ginkgo biloba leaves by high‐temperature pretreatment processing

High‐temperature pretreatment was developed in this article to remove the main toxic constituents of ginkgolic acids (GAs) from Ginkgo biloba leaves (GBLs) and improve the bioactive flavonoid content by water extraction. To optimize the effects of high‐temperature pretreatment process parameters on removing toxic GAs to a limited level and improving the content of bioactive flavonoids, a Box–Behnken design (BBD) combined with response surface methodology (RSM) was also conducted. The results showed that the content of GAs could be reduced to 4.11 ppm and the highest content of flavonoids could reach 3.51% under the optimized conditions of high‐temperature pretreatment process of 177°C with water extraction at 96°C at a liquid‐to‐solid ratio of 56:1. The content of toxic GAs substantially decreased by 83.50% while the content of bioactive flavonoids increased by 44.30% compared with the conventional water extraction method. Moreover, the new process was more efficient, environmentally friendly, and could get avoid a subsequent multi‐step process of removing toxic GAs. The crude extracts were then purified by macroporous resin to obtain the 60% ethanol fraction. After purification, the flavonoid content increased to 43.50% while the GAs were not detected. The main compounds of 60% ethanol fraction were identified by UPLC‐QTOF‐MS/MS. Antioxidant activities including reducing powder, 2,2‐diphenyl−1‐picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging, and OH(·) scavenging assays all showed that the 60% ethanol fraction was better than the butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) standard.