Improving antioxidant activities of water-soluble lignin-carbohydrate complex isolated from wheat stalk through prolonging ball-milling pretreatment and homogeneous extraction

Water-soluble lignin-carbohydrate complex(LCC)rich in polysaccharides exhibits benign in vitro antioxidant activities and distinguishes high biocompatibility from lignin-rich LCC and lignin.However,the antioxidant activity of water-soluble LCCs remains to be improved and its structure-antioxidant relationship is still uncertain.Herein,structurally diversified water-soluble LCCs were isolated under different ball-milling pretreatment durations(4,6,8 h),extraction pathways(ho-mogeneous and heterogeneous),and isolation routines(water extracts and residues after water extraction).Their structures were characterized by wet chemistry,chromatography and spec-troscopies.Antioxidant activities were evaluated by ferric reducing antioxidant power and 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radicals scavenging rate(RDPPH).Results show that altering ball-milling duration and isolation procedures cause varied structures and antioxidant activities of the water-soluble LCCs.Specifically,prolonging ball-milling duration to 8 hours and homogeneous extrac-tion can enhance their antioxidant activity through releasing more phenolic structures and pro-moting the extraction of high-molecular-weight LCCs via reducing mass-transfer resistance,re-spectively.As a result,the RDPPH of water-soluble LCCs reaches up to 97.35%,which is associated with the arabinan content with statistical significance(P<0.05).This study provides new insights into the structure-antioxidation relationship of herbaceous LCC as potential antioxidants.