Summary ASIA

For this project, an investigation was done looking into the piperine content in pepper for the Huijbregts Groep B.V (HG). Their products are involved in 80% of the daily meals in The Netherlands, due to their large role supplying colour, aroma and flavour additives for various food supplements. HG buys, blends and sells mostly food commodities in powder form, but also dried vegetables and spices. One of these dried products are peppercorns produced by the pepper plant (Piper Nigrum). The substance which gives these corns this spicy taste is piperine. HG is committed to make sure that their customers must be able to produce a consistent product without a perceivable taste difference between shipments.  For this reason, HG asked Fontys Hogescholen to produce a protocol whereby the piperine content can be measured and quantified.

              The pepper plant Piper Nigrum produces the peppercorns, the black, green and white corns are derived from this plant. The difference in colour has to do with the time of harvest, drying process and the after-treatment. De colour is not responsible for the spicy taste. Piperine is the main compound in these corns, it belongs to the chemical class called alkaloids. Due to this its poorly soluble in water, but good in organic solvents such as ethanol and methanol.

The set-up of this report is as follows; there are two extraction methods to be compared with each other, namely the Soxhlet and the reflux extraction. To determine the efficiency of the piperine content from these extractions, a calibration curve was compiled and measured with HPLC and UV/VIS spectroscopy. The HPLC was used to validate the UV/VIS method.

There are several practices implemented. The most reliable practice part is part 6, because there is used precise and analytical work. Therefore are the results based on part 6. The results showed us that the Soxhlet-extraction is the best method of extraction, because it is a continuous process without becoming saturated. And you have to perform less proceedings. To compare the Soxhlet and reflux extractions, the difference between de results of Soxhlet and reflux were very large. This difference can be explained as follows: the HPLC chromatogram has more than 2 or 3 peaks. The large peak is probably piperine. So, there is continued with the large peak. The UV/VIS measures all components in the sample. With the HPLC it is possible to choose the peak of interest, so the concentration could be calculated with these peak. The evaporate method didn’t gave the expected results. Probably there are more components extracted from the pepper. This can be seen in de FTIR spectrum of the sample. The spectrum has a great –OH peak at value 3200 cm^-1. The spectrum of pure piperine doesn’t have this great –OH peak.

From the Soxhlet-extraction there was concluded that the piperine content had an average of 6.1% measured with the UV/VIS. The piperine content measured with the HPLC for the Soxhlet-extraction had an average of 5.6%. From the reflux extraction there can be concluded that it has an average of 6.0% measured with the UV/VIS and an average of 5.5% measured with the HPLC.

With the chosen method it is possible to analyse and quanify the piperine content in pepper.