EXTRACTING AND PURIFYING OF PROPOLIS OF HONEY- SOLVENT SELECTION AND COMPONENTS IDENTIFICATION

The aim of the present study is to extract propolis of honey and select a suitable solvent to extract its component. Four types of propolis were sampled from different locations across Iranand examined for identification of the components. In this research, about 1500 g of clean raw propolis was refrigerated at - 4°C for 30 days before being powder in a mill. Different solvents were used to extract propolis components. Propolis samples from different regions across Iran were identified using TLC and GC-MS analyses to determine chemical composition and spectrophotometric quantification was undertaken to find the most important active principles. By TLC comparisons, corresponding Rf to each of the propolis types were found. The results for the extracts with different compositions (as obtained via TLC analysis) showed that the general class of propolis samples from western Iran contains: aliphatic acid, aldehydes, flavonoids, aromatic acids, phenols and other minor components. Propolis samples were identified by GC/MS and were best extracted using 70% ethanol as a solvent. Based on the results, 70 compounds were identified in propolis samples.