Ultrasound-assisted extraction of isoflavones from soy beverages blended with fruit juices

A new method for the fast determination of isoflavones from soy beverages blended with fruit juices without the need of freeze-drying the sample was developed. During the method development, several parameters were studied: solvent (methanol and ethanol), sample:solvent ratio (5:1 to 0.2:1), temperature (10-60 °C) and extraction time (5-30 min). The most important parameter for the extraction of isoflavones from soy drinks was the sample:solvent ratio. The optimized method consists of extracting the sample with ethanol with a sample:solvent ratio of 0.2:1 on an ultrasound bath at 45 °C during 20 min. Also, samples were freeze-dried, extracted using conventional method and compared with the optimized method and no significant difference was observed on total and individual isoflavone concentration. The most representative samples from the Spanish market, with a wide variation of isoflavone concentration were analyzed using the optimized method. Differences between manufacturers reached an almost 10 times fold variation. Overall isoflavone concentration ranged from 6.7 to 58.2 mg L⁻¹.