Fenugreek Case Study

Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum graceum L.), an indigenous spice crop of India has been widely used in traditional medicine for treating various kinds of diseases. In this work, 10 genotypes of T. foenum-graceum were evaluated for their diosgenin content and productivity, ascorbic acid (AA), total phenolics (TP), flavonoids (TF), tannin and antioxidant activity (AOX). Results indicate that fenugreek is a good source of flavonoid and total phenolics ranging from 2.74to 12.03 mg/g and 22.59 to 62.59 mg/g, respectively. Diosgenin content ranged from, 6.12 to 10.98 mg/g respectively. One way ANOVA analysis was performed to find the functional attributes which would account for most of the variance.

Introduction
Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum graceum
The usefulness of fenugreek as a commercial and chemurgical crop is now being recognized, not only as a break crop for cereal area, where it is a very good soil renovator (Duke, 1986), but as a source of diosgenin and other constituents potential role for nutraceuticals and dietary supplements in possible health benefits beyond traditional nutritional value (Basu et al, 2007). From the world production of fenugreek it can be estimated that more than half is produced in India. In India fenugreek productivity in years 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11 was 1.1, 1.3 and 1.5 MT hec-1 respectively. One of the possible application for which is claimed fenugreek has good prospects its utilization as a source of diosgenin a steroidal precursor (Petropoulos, 2003). The total turnover of bulk steroids in the world is estimated to be about 500 million US dollars and estimated world uses to be somewhere between 550-650 tons of diosgenin. The total annual requirement of diosgenin by pharmaceutical industry in India is about 100 tonnes (reff). The present production of diosgenin, mostly produced from Dioschorea deltoid in India approximately 15-20 tonnes annually (Panda, 1999) by a process that is costly and difficult requiring many years before the tuber grown to a size with significant content of diosgenin. Other diosgenin alternative sources which could yield diosgenin in workable quantities and commercial explicated includes Costus
So Scientific phytochemical screening to obtain superior varieties containing rich amount of industrial important metabolite and phytochemical may acts as a bridge to minimize the gap between its current productivity and potential uses.

Material and methods
Sample
Fenugreek seeds used in this study was initially obtained from a wide range of climatic zone and environment and selected for grow in the experimental fields of Vegetable Research Center (VRC) Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, India. The study was conducted in cropping year 2014. Different varieties of fenugreek seeds were ground using mortar peston to get fine flour and immediately used for extraction.
Extract preparation
For each replicate 5 g of seed flour were extracted twice with 30 ml of 80% methanol (V/V) and incubated in room temperature for overnight with stirring (orbital shaker 100 rpm). After the incubation the mixture was pooled and centrifuged 5000 rpm for 10 min. Supernatant was filtered through filter paper (Whatman No 1) and vacuum concentrated at 50 C in a rota-evaporator and stored at -20C. The concentrated sample was used as a sample extract for estimation of TPC, TF, TT, and AOX.
Estimation of total phenol, flavonoid and tannin