New Method Development for Extraction and Isolation of Piperine from Black Pepper

Piperine, a major alkaloid in black pepper is one of the most promising bioenhancers till date. Other methods used for its extraction suffer drawbacks such as poor extraction efficiency, tedious and expensive isolation methodology, piperine photodegradation, etc. Hence a simple, rapid and efficient method has been developed for the isolation of piperine from the fruits of Piper nigrum. The methods under study involve extraction of piperine with various solvents such as ethanol, glacial acetic acid and dichloromethane. Then isolation and purification were followed by separate classical methods for respective extracts. Compared to other two methods, the novel method using glacial acetic acid proved to be effective in isolating piperine with higher yield and in higher purity. Hence extract derived using glacial acetic acid was further subjected to column chromatography. Finally raisins removal and crystal formation were facilitated by recrystallization with solvent ether after alkali wash. Then identification of the compound was confirmed by various analytical methods TLC, melting point, UV-visible spectrophotometer, FT-IR, HPLC and compared it with authentic piperine which resulted into better pure piperine crystals as that of authentic piperine. INTRODUCTION: The fruits of Piper nigrum (black pepper) have been widely used in household spices and also in various traditional systems of medicine. Pepper consist of piperine alkaloid (39%), pungent resin (6.0%), volatile oil (1-2.5%), piperidine and starch (about 30%) 1, 2, 5 . Piperine is major alkaloid 5 of black pepper belonging to family Piperaceae which has antiinflammatory 3, 4 , analgesic 4 , antiarthritic 3 , CNS depressant 6 ,anticonvulsant 6 etc.