Quantification of Karanjin Using High Performance Liquid Chromatography in Raw and Detoxified Karanj (Pongamia glabra vent) Seed Cake

Abstract

Various products of karanj (Pongamia glabra) are utilized for industrial, health and animal agriculture applications in the Indian subcontinent. Despite a rich source of protein (CP, 28-34%), karanj cake was found to be slightly bitter in taste and toxic owing to the presence of flavonoid (Karanjin), restricting its safe inclusion in the livestock diets. Feeding trials with raw cake revealed its poor palatability and adverse performance among different categories of livestock including poultry. The present study was, therefore, aimed to detoxify karanj cake by various physico-chemical methods like solvent extraction, water washing, pressure cooking and alkali and acid treatments. The level of residual karanjin in raw and variously processed cake was quantified using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The raw expeller karanj cake was found to contain about 0.19% of karanjin. Though a non-polar solvent, soxhlet extraction of expeller pressed cake with petroleum ether drastically reduced karanjin content (0.01%). Soaking of cake for 24 h in 1% NaOH (w/w) solution was found to reduce karanjin to a major extent with little further benefit by increasing alkali level. Milder alkalies like lime and fertilizer grade urea reduced the karanjin levels marginally. Similar was the case with mineral acids such as HCl and glacial acetic acid. It was, therefore, concluded that solvent extraction of karanj seeds would be the best method of detoxification as well as for more recovery of oil and karanjin.

Effect of detoxified karanja (Pongamia spp.) cake on testicular architecture and semen production in ram lambs

“…Various methods, namely refluxing with 2% HCl (Mandal, 1985), solvent extraction, water leaching, autoclaving, acid and alkali treatment were adapted to detoxify karanja cake. Among all the methods, solvent extraction was found to remove karanjin efficiently (Prabhu et al, 2002) and is being widely used as a method to detoxify karanja cake. The information on the effect of feeding detoxified karanja cake (dKC) on testicular function were not reported in detail.…”

“…The seed kernel after extraction of oil is rich (around 30%) in crude protein (CP) and can be used in livestock and poultry feed as a protein source (Konwar et al, 1987;Vinay and Sindhu Kanya, 2008). However, raw expeller karanja cake is not commonly used as a feed for livestock because of the presence of toxic karanjin, pongamol and certain other polyphenolic compounds and poor palatability (Bringi and Mukerjee, 1987;Prabhu et al, 2002). These toxic factors can affect livestock performance and immune competence (Srivastava et al, 1990;Panda et al, 2004;Nagalakshmi et al, 2011).…”

Performance of growing lambs fed processed karanj (Pongamia glabra) oil seed cake as partial protein supplement to soybean meal

“…The karanjin concentration in the raw SKC has been reported to be within the range 0.10 and 1.32 g/kg (Prabhu et al., 2002; Panda et al., 2006). This disparity in karanjin content of raw cake may be because of residual karanjin left back in the cake by the extraction methods adopted.…”

Wound healing efficacy of Jatyadi Taila: In vivo evaluation in rat using excision wound model

“…There have been reports on quality control of karanjin from crude drugs of Karanj [Pongamia pinnata L. (Pierre)] (Ravikanth et al, 2009;Prabhu et al, 2002;Gore and Satyamoorthy, 2000) using TLC and HPLC methods. However pharmacokinetic study of JT using Karanjin as a marker has not been reported so far.…”