The okras were washed and then rinsed with deionised water.
The upper crown head and the seeds inside the pods were then
removed, and the pods sliced into 5e10 mm cubes. The sliced pods
were ground and mixed with deionised water with a predetermined
solvent loading (w/w) in conical flasks. The flasks were
sealed and placed in a shaker bath at a constant temperature and
agitation speed (Supplementary Fig. S1). The evaporation rate was
verified to be less than 0.05% over the duration of the extraction.
After the predetermined extraction time, the flasks were kept aside
at room temperature for 1 h for complete release of the mucilage
into water (Ameena et al., 2010).