on the recovery of steviol glycosides from Stevia
has been studied by several research groups (Table 2). For
instance, an increase in steviol glycoside’s recovery was found
after applying SFE (3−3.4%), in two steps, (a) the pretreatment
of the leaves by SFE; (b) the extraction of the Stevia
glycosides by SFE using CO2 as solvent and water and/or
ethanol as cosolvent, compared to that of the conventional
extraction process.70 In this line, other authors also obtained
50% and 72% recovery of the original stevioside and
rebaudioside A, respectively, when using a two-step SFE
process: (1) CO2 extraction and (2) CO2 + water extraction.7