Institute of Horticultural Research, Hessaraghatta, Bangalore-6.
The concentration of 2.5 N HC1 for 2 hours could be employed for hydrolysing powdered Dioscorea tubers for better diosgenin extraction. Eight hours extraction of hydrolysed tuber material with petroleum ether (b.p.40–60°C) in a soxhlet extractor, maintained at 60°C was found to be sufficient to extract most of the diosgenin. The purity of the crude diosgenin extracted by this procedure was found to be 86.8 to 87.6 per cent by crystallisation studies.
