Quality Profiling of Major Spices

Spices like black pepper, cardamom, ginger, turmeric, vanilla, chili, cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg are valued for their culinary, medicinal, and nutraceutical properties. The attributes that impart these properties are the secondary metabolites present in the spice broadly categorized as essential oils and oleoresins. Variability in these constituents of spices is very important from an industrial and crop improvement perspective. Standards have been fixed for both domestic consumption and export. Maturity at harvest, agro-climatic conditions, and processing techniques of spices play great roles in the content and overall chemical profile of these constituents. Farming location effect is very significant as it has been shown in the case of curcumin content of turmeric and caryophyllene content of black pepper. Post harvest handling procedures also do play important role in the product quality and secondary metabolite content and profile as reported in the case of turmeric. Total phenols play a very significant role in deciding the antioxidant property as well as the overall quality profile. Coumarin content of Chinese and Indonesian cinnamons has implications in industrial application. This chapter provides a broad overview of research achievements in quality attributes of major spices with special relevance to the research and development programs carried out in India during the past seven decades. The crops dealt with includes all major spices, namely, black pepper, cardamom, ginger, turmeric, tree spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, cassia, cloves, vanilla, and capsicums and chilies. Readers may also refer individual chapters for further information on the chemistry of the respective spices.