Analytical Development of Piperine as Herbal Reference Material from Black Pepper for Quality Control Purposes: Liquid Chromatography-Quadrupole Time-of-Flight, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, and Thermal Analysis

Various spices and their oleoresins are being marketed since long and it has multibillion market. One of the most often used spices is black pepper (Piper nigrum), which gets its pungent flavour from volatile chemical components, essential oils, and an alkaloid called piperine. Piperine is also known for huge therapeutic benefits and most people are using daily in food products also. Most significantly, piperine is recognised as a bioavailability enhancer by stopping CYP enzyme activity. Therefore, our aim is to develop black pepper extract and isolation of piperine from black pepper. Various analytical techniques including, UV-Visible Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Thermogravimetric Analysis, Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Carbon-13 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry were used to characterize piperine. NMR confirms its structure and molecular weight was confirmed by HRMS. Purified piperine has shown HPLC purity >99.5%. DSC has shown the melting peaks of 130.12°C. Piperine have great commercial potential as reference materials for regular quality control in the herbal industries for black pepper-based products.