ABSTRACT
Black Pepper, known as the King of Spices, is the most important and most widely used spice in the world. The black pepper of commerce is the dried, mature fruits (commonly called berries) of the tropical, perennial climbing plant Piper nigrum L., which belongs to the family Piperaceae. Black pepper (hereafter the name pepper is used to mean black pepper) is a woody climber, grown in the South Western region of India, comprising of the states of Kerala, parts of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Goa, the entire region once known as Malabar, a name now used restrictively to mean only the northern part of Kerala. The humid tropical evergreen forests bordering the Malabar Coast (the Western Ghats, one of the hot spot areas of plant bio-diversity on earth) is the centre of origin and diversity for both the King of Spices (Pepper) and Queen of Spices (CardamomElettaria cardamomum Maton). The Malabar coast was involved in the cultivation and trade of pepper from very early times. From here pepper was taken to Indonesia, Malaysia and subsequently to other pepper growing countries. Currently pepper is grown in twenty six countries* (Table 1).
