Preliminary Phytochemical Investigations with Quantitative Fractionation of Orange Pulp (Citrus Aurantium Var. Dulcis L.): Natural Product Waste as Medicine
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 (40g), unsaturated hexane fraction (2.0g), methanolic fraction (1.3g), acidic fraction (1.2g) and basic fraction (0.3g).
