Phytochemistry of Plants of Genus Piper

Brijesh Kumar, Surabhi Tiwari, Vikas Bajpai, Bikarma Singh

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000064704
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Piper is the representative genus of family Piperaceae. Piper species are pan-tropical in distribution and found in both the hemispheres. As the king of all spices, black pepper, Piper nigrum, led to the global expeditions culminating in the discovery of India and the new world. Piper species have been reported to possess various pharmacological activities such as insecticidal, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antiplatelet, anti-hypertensive, antithyroid, antitumor activities and hepatoprotective properties. Botanical authentication of the plants of Piper species is difficult because of the morphological similarity among the species. This book describes ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole electrospray tandem mass spectrometry in multiple reactions monitoring (MRM) mode to study the quantitative variation of thirteen bioactive markers in different plant parts of ten Piper species.

Features:

• Collection of Ayurvedic features and scientific evidence of the most important medicinal plants of Piper species.
• Describes chemical signatures for identification of Piper species.
• Provides easy-to-use analytical procedure for quality control of Piper species and its products.

1

Introduction

Since very ancient times, humans have used plants as medicine for their wellness. The use of medicinal plants for healing purposes is as old as mankind. Some of the life-saving drugs in the modern medicine have originated from plants. The plant kingdom is a store house of a variety of organic components, many of them having excellent medicinal properties. Moreover, herbal medicines play an important role in the primary healthcare of a majority of the world’s population. The main traditional systems of medicine practiced in India, Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Siddha and Unani, used plant-based medicines. Herbal formulations play an important role in the successful management of various diseases without any side effects. As the use of herbal formulations has increased due to their medicinal properties in recent years, the genus Piper has received considerable attention. The widely distributed Piper species in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world, have been used as folk medicine (Parmar et al. 1997; Stöhr et al. 2001). The well-known therapeutic properties of Piper genus have made it an important ingredient in Indian system of medicine (ISM). Piper nigrum is one of the most widely recognized species of this genus. The presence of several exotic phytochemicals as secondary metabolites is the main reason for the traditional uses of Piper species. Different classes of compounds such as alkaloids, amides, benzoic acids, chalcones, chromenes, flavonoids, lignans, long-chain esters, phenolics, phenylpropanoids, pyrones, steroids and terpenoids are reported to be present in Piper species (Parmar et al. 1998). Alkaloids are the most important class of compounds in Piper species, and a piperamide, piperine (1-piperoylpiperidine), the principal alkaloid occurring in the fruits of Piper species, has shown diverse pharmacological activities (Khajuria et al. 1998; Dorman and Deans 2000; Sunila and Kuttan 2004; Lee et al. 2005; Bhat et al. 1987; Desai et al. 2008; Mujumdar et al. 1990; Dhuley et al. 1993; Daware et al. 2000; Bajad et al. 2001b).

1.1 Common Names of Piper Species

Piper nigrum is commonly known as Black Pepper in English; Pilpil in Persian; Poivre in French; Schwartze in German; Filfiluswud or Fil-fila-siah in Arabic; Maricham, Maricha, Hapusha, Krishnam, Ooshnam or Valliyam in Sanskrit; Gulmirch or Kalimirch in Hindi; Gol-mirich or Golmorich in Punjabi; Martz in Kashmiri; Vellajung in Bengali; Kalomirich in Gujarati; KaaleMeere in Marathi; Miire in Konkani; Jalook in Assamese; Miriyalu in Telugu; Gurumusi in Manipuri; Golamaricha in Oriya; Kara mirch in Sindhi; Milagu in Tamil; Kuru-mulaka or Kuru-milagu in Malayalam; and Filfil Siyah or Kalimirich in Urdu (Dhanalakshmi et al. 2017).

1.2 Distribution of Piper Species

The genus Piper is of great commercial and economic importance in pharmaceutical and food industries. It belongs to the family Piperaceae which consists of mainly herbs (terrestrial and epiphytes), shrubs, vines or trees having six genera with 3,000 species containing alkaloids and aromatic volatile oils. Piperaceae family is distributed in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. In terms of phylogenetic position, Piperaceae is among the diverse assemblage of dicots termed “paleoherbs,” and the plants resemble monocots in certain vegetative features such as adaxial prophyll and scattered vascular bundles (Chopra and Vishwakarma 2018). The most common genera are Piper and Peperomia having 1,000 and 700 species, respectively. Piper is one of the most diversified genera within the family Piperaceae, and it occupies a basal lineage position in the angiosperm group. Piper includes bushes and herbs that can be found in humid or wet places all around the world, especially in tropical regions of both the hemispheres. Piper has the largest number of species found in America (700 species), followed by Southern Asia (300 species), South Pacific (140 species) and Africa (15 species). The genus Piper is one of the largest genera of basal angiosperms (TPL 2019) and distributed from sea level to the high ranges of Andes and sub-Himalayan ranges (Royle 1893). It grows wild in the tropical rainforests of India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Timor (Chopra and Vishwakarma 2018) ( Figure 1.1). In India, 110 species of Piper are reported from different regions. The two most impo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Authors
• List of Abbreviations and Units
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Metabolic Profiling of Piper Species by Direct Analysis Using Real Time Mass Spectrometry Combined with Principal Component Analysis
• 3 Quantitative Determination of Chemical Constituents of Piper Species Using UPLC-ESI-MS/MS
• 4 Conclusions
• References
• Index