Investigation on Large Scale Production of Steroid Drugs from Agave Plants

Abstract

Sisal plants (agave family) are grow in abundance in many parts of India in waste iands. These plants (Fig.1) can be grown under arid and semi arid conditions and survive with an annual rainfall between 35 mm and 300 mm. Mexico Brazil, Philippines and Tanganyika have large plant ions covering thousands of acres. At present this plant is mainly utilized as a source of fibre, the yield of which is about 3–4% of leaf weight. The remaining 96% is left unutilized and is thus wasted. Preliminary investigations carried out on Sisal juice and pulp in our laboratory after extracting fibre gave the following results: Hecogenin: 0.06–0.1% leaf weight; Wax from cuticles: (0.3-0.35% leaf weight) Paper from waste fibre in Sisal pulp: 0.15–0.2% of leaf weight.In this paper, large scale extraction of hecogenin (Steroid sapogenin) from sisal juice sediment and further conversion of hecogenin to androstan (17-01-3-one) has been presented.