Abstract
Cosmetic activities of the leaves of Curcuma longa L. were compared according to different drying methods, to expand the use of the by-products of Curcuma longa L. The highest extraction yield of 29.4% was obtained from vacuum drying process (VD), whose value was very close to 29.2% from freeze drying process (FD). Relatively lower extraction yield were observed as 24.5% and 25.3% from the raw leaf (RL) as control and hot air drying process (HD). The cytotoxicity was observed lower FD and VD than RL and HD. It shows that cytotoxicity was closely related to cosmetic activities such as tyrosinase and melanin inhibition activities by showing much better cosmetic activities of the extracts from both FD and VD than those from the RL and HD. It was interesting that was differences of the cosmetic activities and cytotoxicity between FD and VD, which implies that VD method should be a more efficient process than FD method in terms of drying time and operation costs: 6 hours vs 24 hours and 3-5 times higher extraction costs in drying. It was observed that VD is more excellent dry method than others. This result could be utilized to effectively dry other soft plant biomass.
