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Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 3: Scientists have spotted a piperine-rich pepper-species in the Agasthyamala belt of the Western Ghats, marking a possible value breakthrough in India’s pepper trade competitiveness. Although the new vine’s productivity aspects are not heartening, it is its chemotype with high piperine yield that’s catching the eye of pharma researchers worldwide.
The newly spotted breed is a rare wild pepper plant with pungent fruit and lemon-scented leaves, say KB Ramesh Kumar, PJ Mathew, and V George of the Tropical Botanical Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI), who did the study. The genotype has been named PMM, after the professor of Kerala University, who first reported the precise number of chromosomes in pepper. The ‘PMM’ vine is low-yielding. But not the fruit, Kumar told FE.
Compared to the essential oil yield in a cultivated species (like, for example, purebred amperine), which is just 2.8%, the fruit of the newly-spotted species showed nearly 10% essential oil yield. Against the 4.8% piperine content of commonly found plants, the fruit of the wild species scored with double piperine yield at 10.2%.
Piperine is a bio-availability enhancer used in pharmaceutical combinations with a catalyst effect. This could turn a marginally effective therapeutic application to a highly effective one, just by jacking up its bio-availability and intracellular residency time. The species had caught the scientists’ attention during a field trip to the Agasthyamala thickets. Experts caution that it would be a long road of R&D and industry sweat, before ‘PMM’ enters the commercial fold.
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