| Tea saponin is a kind of natural non-ionic surfactant, which is widely used in food, medicine, materials, daily chemical, agriculture and other fields. In recent years, with the deepening of research and development, more and more attention has been paid to the biological activities of tea saponin by all walks of life. However, due to the limitation of extraction and purification technology, the purity of tea saponin is low, which makes the actual economic value of tea saponin industry far lower than expected. At present, the researches on the extraction technology of tea saponin at home and abroad include auxiliary extraction, supercritical extraction, flash extraction, biological extraction, subcritical extraction and aqueous two-phase extraction. Researches on purification technology include enzymatic hydrolysis, precipitation, gel chromatography, high-speed counter-current chromatography, macroporous resin and membrane separation. The researches on biological activity function include antibacterial, hemolytic activity and toxicity, promoting the absorption of pollutants by plants, anticancer and lipid-lowering. In this paper, the advantages and existing problems of different extraction and purification technologies and the structure-activity relationship of tea saponin were analyzed, and the key research directions in the future was proposed in order to provide references for the development and application of tea saponin. |
