Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Extracting Stevioside from Stevia

Extracting Stevioside from Stevia

Romix - 19-5-2021 at 20:25

Is it possible to extract Stevioside from Stevia plant leaves?
Bugs were terrorizing my plant, first I've boiled some tobacco and sprayed solution all over the plant. Bugs disappeared for few days but then came back. So I sprayed it with a pesticide bought online, now I'm scared brewing leaves in a tea.

zinc finger - 21-5-2021 at 00:49

It is possible. I am only not sure how much leaves you would need.
I would try using hot ethanol on crushed leaves, filtering and then precipitating it in ice cold water. Purifying it should be possible via recrystallisation.

[Edited on 21-5-2021 by zinc finger]

Opylation - 21-5-2021 at 01:55

If you're trying to keep the plant, some warm water with dish soap sprayed onto the plant daily (more if you'd like) will kill any insects. This is because the oleophilic soap will dissolve the exoskeleton of the insect. It can take a day or two to notice affects. I've used this for killing aphids on the plants in my garden

Aloesci - 21-5-2021 at 02:58

One paper describes using 200g dried leaves to 1L water.
They used increased pressure and temperature for 20 minutes and 'wine pressed' the resulting mixture to obtain a solution.
When the solution was dried, their powder was over 50% steviolglycosides.
I'm guessing these could be re-crystalised or puritified with food grade ethanol.

draculic acid69 - 21-5-2021 at 03:51

I cold water extracted a handful of dried Stevia once and while the resulting solution was sweet the bitterness that was also extracted overpowered the sweetness making it unusable. I can't imagine this will improve with heat and pressure. I also doubt ethanol will not suffer the same problem. And to top it off I call bullshit on the companies that say "we only use water to extract the glycosides". How do U get a white powder from a green leaf that makes water turn green using water. I suppose if you extract everyother component with hexanes or whatever before using water to extract the glycosides it's really just lying by omission

[Edited on 21-5-2021 by draculic acid69]

draculic acid69 - 21-5-2021 at 04:05

Quote: Originally posted by Romix

Is it possible to extract Stevioside from Stevia plant leaves?
Bugs were terrorizing my plant, first I've boiled some tobacco and sprayed solution all over the plant. Bugs disappeared for few days but then came back. So I sprayed it with a pesticide bought online, now I'm scared brewing leaves in a tea.

Unless your pesticide is food safe or breaks down completely
after a set period of time I would pass on it.
Does the package of your pesticide say anything about
using it on food crops?

unionised - 21-5-2021 at 04:11

It's reasonably easy to extract the Steviosides you want.
What's more difficult is not extracting nicotine along with it.

There's a reason why nicotine is no longer licensed as an insecticide.
It is more toxic to people than it is to insects.

Texium - 21-5-2021 at 04:54

Quote: Originally posted by Romix

Good job, you rendered an edible plant inedible. Sure you could try to extract the glycosides, but how will you know that you succeeded in removing the pesticides, and didn’t actually just concentrate them along with your desired glycosides? You might as well ditch the plant unless you just want to keep it as an ornamental.

Quote: Originally posted by draculic acid69

And to top it off I call bullshit on the companies that say "we only use water to extract the glycosides". How do U get a white powder from a green leaf that makes water turn green using water. I suppose if you extract everyother component with hexanes or whatever before using water to extract the glycosides it's really just lying by omission

They probably just filter the extract through activated carbon

draculic acid69 - 21-5-2021 at 05:06

I doubt carbon alone would get the colour out.

zinc finger - 21-5-2021 at 05:13

http://dx.doi.org/10.15174/au.2017.1209

Seems reasonable according to this paper

As the DOI does not seem to work:
Link

[Edited on 21-5-2021 by zinc finger]

pneumatician - 22-5-2021 at 14:18

You can do it but the medicinal properties are removed. If you only have a plant, remove by hand the bugs... use natural predators... remove bugs and enclose the plant in a net...

karlos³ - 22-5-2021 at 14:37

I always liked using Chrysopidae larvae, which you can buy as eggs easily and cheap.
And those guys have a voracious hunger... and for some reason, they liked to crawl over my computer screen, probably because it was warm... one bit me in the finger on accident, I wiped it away and only then saw one of those brave lions had died...
And two months later you have the adult lacewings in your rooms which can easily be shooed away.

Get some of those killers, its one of the best bug-treatments for plants, except maybe for spidermites.
Yeah they might look bad... they absolutely are though... but they are killers!
Best against aphids, their natural prey... german name is even related to this, its translated "aphid lion"(Blattlauslöwe).

Romix - 23-5-2021 at 07:25

What I noticed about Stevia, that bugs only appearing on a leaves that are close to lamp, the ones are in a shadow doesn't have any!
Possibly light destroys natural pesticides in a plant?
Or maybe it's just warmer for them there...

[Edited on 23-5-2021 by Romix]

[Edited on 23-5-2021 by Romix]