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Catalog of Herbs
Published in James A. Duke, Handbook of Medicinal Herbs, 2018
Contains quassin, C22H28O6, quassinol, 18-hydroxyquassin, and neoquassin, bitter principles said to be 50 times more bitter than quinine, and two more quassinoids, quassinacin, and simalikalactone D.29Hager’s Handbook adds beta-sitosterol, isoquassin (C22H28O6), circa 0.25% alkaloids. The root bark contains quassin, a volatile oil, malic acid, gallic acid, calcium tartrate, and potassium acetate.1
First report on the presence of aflatoxins in fig seed oil and the efficacy of adsorbents in reducing aflatoxin levels in aqueous and oily media
Published in Toxin Reviews, 2022
According to our results, aflatoxins in fig extracts could also be effectively reduced by marl treatment (Figure 1). Reductions of 76.23–93.79% and 66.94–89.60% in the levels of aflatoxin B1 and total aflatoxins, respectively, were recorded after treating the extracts with this agent. Reduction rates increased with increasing the concentration of the agent (p < 0.05). At the treatment concentration of 5.0%, the aflatoxin reduction rates obtained with marl were not significantly different than those obtained with activated carbon and bentonite (p < 0.05). Marl, a calcareous clay containing a high amount of calcium carbonate, is conventionally used for deacidification of grape must (Karababa and Develi Isikli 2005). It lowers the acidity by precipitating tartaric acid and malic acid as calcium tartrate and calcium malate, respectively. This causes an increase in the pH of the must from around 3.5 to 5.0–6.0 (Rezaei et al.2020). In the past, reductions in aflatoxin levels were observed during processing of the must, especially after treating with marl (Bahar and Altug 2009, Heshmati et al. 2019). However, it was not clarified that if the reduction was caused as a result of an adsorption effect or due to structural change of the toxin caused by alkalization of the medium.