Black pepper is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. Black pepper is native to South India and other tropical regions . The fruit, known as a peppercorn when dried, is a small drupe , dark red when fully mature, containing a single seed.

Pepper is known for its spicy aroma and hot pungent taste. It gets its spicy heat mostly from the piperine compound, which is found both in the outer fruit and in the seed.To produce black pepper the berries are plucked when they have not yet fully matured. The green berries are then dried in the sun for several days, during which the fruit around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer around the seed.