New phases for analytical scale extraction from plants: Current and future trends

Analyses in the plant field have to cover a wide range of topics, starting from metabolomics to the quali-quantitative determination of a single or a class of metabolites, often dealing with very complex matrices. The development of an appropriate sample preparation method is fundamental to obtain complete information, because downstream analyses will detect only the metabolites previously extracted. The choice of the proper extraction phase is therefore of utmost importance and the most critical parameter to be considered. Although most of the studies on plants still mainly adopt traditional extraction approaches, a wide number of new phases with improved features in terms of tunability, selectivity and, most important, sustainability have been developed in the past decades and applied to the study of natural products. This review provides an overview of the new extraction phases developed and adopted for the study of plant endogenous and exogenous metabolites.