Isolation and characterization of curcumin from powdered rhizomes of turmeric plant marketed in Maragheh city of Iran with soxhlet technique

Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) is extensively used as a spice, food preservative and coloring material. It has been used in traditional medicine for various diseases. Curcumin, the main yellow bioactive component of turmeric has been shown to have a wide spectrum of biological actions. Heretofore, it has been reported that natural colored extracts were isolated from turmeric rhizomeswith many methods such as maceration, digestion, microwave and infusion. In this paper, it was tried to isolate and characterize curcumin from the curcumin rhizomes marketed in Maragheh city of Iran by soxhlet extraction technique in methanol solvent. The advantage of this technique is the isolation of large amounts of curcumin (208 mg from 25 g turmeric rhizomes powder) with smaller quantity of methanol.