Isolation of α-arbutin from Xanthomonas CGMCC 1243 fermentation broth by macroporous resin adsorption chromatography

α-Arbutin is a glycosylated hydroquinone which has inhibitory function against tyrosinase. In this work, a one-step isolation of α-arbutin from Xanthomonas CGMCC 1243 fermentation broth by macroporous resin adsorption chromatography was investigated. The research results indicated that S-8 resin offered the best adsorption and desorption capacities for α-arbutin than others and its equilibrium adsorption data were well-fitted to the Freundlich isotherm. In order to optimize the operating parameters for separating α-arbutin, dynamic adsorption and desorption tests on S-8 column chromatography were carried out. Under optimized conditions (adsorption volume of 7 bed volume (BV), mobile phase of 25% (v/v) ethanol solution and elution volume of 3 BV), the purity and recovery of α-arbutin were 97.3% (w/w) and 90.9% (w/w), respectively. The product was identified as α-arbutin by (13)C NMR and (1)H NMR analysis. Moreover, we scaled up S-8 column from laboratory test (10 cm × 2 cm ID) to large scale (500 cm × 100 cm ID) without diminishing α-arbutin yield. In conclusion, the results in this work provide a one-step and cost-effective method for large-scale production of α-arbutin.