Pomegranate fruit is the most studied part of punica granatum shrub. The fruit contains enormous
amount of polyphenol compounds in the peel and arils (flesh) which are responsible for its antioxidant
activity. The polyphenols present are of varying degree of lipophilicity and thus would require solvents
of varying polarity to extract them. In this study, the effects of solvent type and homogenisation on
extraction yield were considered. The fruit was first separated into peel and flesh and subsequently, one
half of each of the peel and flesh were separately homogenised. Ethanol, ethylacetate and hexane were
used to extract the polyphenol content of each of the four samples; non-homogenised peel (NP), nonhomogenised flesh (NF), homogenised peel (HP) and homogenised flesh (HF) in decreasing order of
polarity using maceration method. The extraction was carried out successively using the residue
recovered from previous extraction. Ethanol was used for a second time to complete the extraction
process. The total extractive yield from the four samples were 27.19, 26.04, 25.03 and 15.61 for HP,
NP, HF and NF respectively. The experiment has demonstrated that maceration process can be used to
extract compounds from pomegranate to give a yield similar to more sophisticated method and ethanol
is a suitable solvent for extracting hydrophilic compounds from the fruit.