Preliminary Phytochemical Investigations with Quantitative Fractionation of Orange Pulp (Citrus aurantium Var. Dulcis L.): Natural Product Waste as Medicine a Recent Study

Abstract

Day by day, faith of people on herbal medicine increases due to the side effect of synthetic drugs; this has resulted into people falling back to the traditional knowledge of plant for their health care. Certain local practitioner and traditional healers use the fruits of Citrus aurantium var. Dulcis L. pulps in various disease management and so, they advise to eat the pulps along with the drinking of the juice. The present study deals with preliminary phytochemical analysis of the fruit of Citrus aurantium var. Dulcis L pulp using 95% ethanol for its extraction. The fruits of Citrus aurantium var. Dulcis L. pulp ethanolic extract revealed the presence of all tested phytochemical compounds except protein and glycoside. These include Alkaloids, Tannins, Phenolic, Quinine, Reducing Sugar, Coumarins, Flavonoids, Saponins and Steroids. During the analysis, the quantitative fractionation of the ethanolic extract showed a reasonable amount of saturated hexane fraction (40 g), unsaturated hexane fraction (2.0 g), methanolic fraction (1.3 g), acidic fraction (1.2 g) and basic fraction (0.3 g). These results from the fruit of Citrus aurantium var. Dulcis L. pulps revealed their ignored medicinal importance by throwing it away to domestic animals, contributing to environmental de-sanitation and a natural product waste as medicine. And its a needful help for the scientific documentation and standardization of row fruits waste material as to be used in medicine and recommended for worldwide acceptance.