Excellent Technological Designing And Antimicrobial Activities Of Capsicum Extract

Capsaicin makes hot and irritative in the capsicum (Capsicum frutescens L.). As the biological active component of capsicum, capsaicin and its products have a lot of uses in the fields of military, medicine and agriculture. Capsaicin is usually regarded as"soft gold". People pay more and more attention to it because of its prospect. At the present time, the producers in our country mainly extract the capsaicin with organic solvent, but it was inefficient. So it may have a bright future for us to sutdy the extraction of capsaicin from capsicum.According to the situation, capsicum in Henan is used as raw material in this paper.The technological parameters of extracting process of capsaicin were excellently designed.The analysis methods of capsaicin were examined. Furthermore, the antimicrobial activities of capsicum extract were investigated. The results of experiments are as followings:1. Dry and red capsicum in Henan was used as raw material to extract capsaicin by using Soxhlet extractor. According to the quality that capsaicin can be dissolved in many kinds of organic solvent, 8 kinds of organic solvent were selected in order to make experiments. As a result, considering toxicity, extraction effects and economic cost,investigation indicated ethanol (75%) can be as the best extracting solvent.2. The process of extracting capsaicin with ethanol from capsicum was optimized by orthogonal test. Four factors, including the ethanol mass fraction, the ratio of raw material to solvent, the extracting time and the extracting number, were studied. Optimum extraction condition was determined as followings: 75% ethanol as extracting solvent, ratio of raw material to solvent selects l:8 (m/v), extracting time is 4 hours, extracting number is 2 times. Extracting rate of capsaicin is (89±1) % and the content of capsaicin in capsicum extract is(7.36±0.02)mg/mL.3. The capsaicin content of different capsicum products was analyzed by the two means of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ultraviolet spectroscopy (FAO). The result showed the datum obtained by this two means were basically consistent.Therefore, FAO has been determined as the suitable analysis method of capsaicin under the condition of no standard capsaicin.4. By a preliminary antimicrobial disc assay, we find that capsicum extract shows broad-spectrum antimicrobial activities and it can effectively inhibit some main bacteria and epiphytes, including eight bacteria, three yeasts and three mold species. In addition, capsicum extract is more effective against fungi than bacteria and the inhibitory effects against the yeasts is more remarkable. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of capsicum extract are between 0.0625 and 0.5 g/mL.