Indian Long Pepper or Pippali (Piper longum), indigenous to Indian subcontinent, is a powerful stimulant to digestive and the respiratory systems including rejuvenating effects on lungs. It is an essential constituent of many Ayurvedic formulations including Trikatu. Hydro distillation of Pippali yielded greenish oil which was subjected to Gas Chromatography-Mass spectrometric (GC-MS) analysis. Fragmentation pattern studies were used to identify ten compounds: 2, 2-dimethyl propanoic acid, decane, 1-decyne, 3,4, 8-trimethyl 1-nonene, undecane, bis- (1-methylpropyl) disulfide, 2,4-nonynoic acid, 2,4-decadienal, nonanoic acid and tetradecanoic acid. Further, it was Soxhlet extracted with 1:1 aqueous methanol followed by column chromatography and preparative Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC), whereby two colourless crystalline compounds- barbituric acid (Rf= 0.74) and tannic acid (Rf = 0.59) were separated. These were confirmed by elemental analysis, m. pt and characteristic infrared spectral studies. Barbituric acid was further confirmed by GC-MS fragmentation analysis. Both the separated acids are of medicinal importance as these are used in many formulations. Some compounds identified by GC-MS are strong antioxidants attributed to medicinal value of P longum.
Garg et al. (Thu,) studied this question.