Piperine content variation in different Piper longum germplasms of North East India determined through RP-HPLC method

The present experiment was conducted at Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat with ten accessions including check variety of Piper Longum germplasm collected from different states of North Eastern region during 2013-14 and 2014-15.The piperine, a major alkaloid used in different therapeutic treatment, per cent content was determined from dried plant materials. Deionised water was used throughout the experiment and the chromatographic separation was carried out in an isocratic elution mode on RP-18 column with 5?m particle size, 4.6mm internal diameter and 250mm length. The mobile phase was a mixture of methanol and water (80: 20). The solvent flow rate was 1.0 ml/minwith injection volume 20 µL. The photo diode array detector wavelength was set at 342 nm for the identification of piperine in all extracts. The per cent piperine content in extract was found to be 42.36 per cent in germplasm PLJ-30.The highest per cent piperine content in fruit was recorded in PLJ-11(7.85%) followed by germplasm PLJ-9 (7.64) and significantly superior over check variety“Viswam”(5.15%). The descending order of piperine content in fruits among germplasm was PLJ-11?PLJ-09?PLJ-30?PLJ-17? PLJ-03? PLJ-19? check variety?PLJ-01? PLJ-20 and PLJ-16. It can be revealed from the present experiment that piper germplasm with high piperine content has a great scope for commercial cultivation as alkaloid piperine has high demand in pharmaceutical use