Avocado oil chemical composition varies with harvest time, growing region, and fruit quality, demonstrating important considerations for standard development

Abstract

Avocado oil currently does not have standards in place to regulate its purity or quality. To set appropriate standards, factors that impact the chemical composition of avocado oil need to be better understood. To help address this, fruits from different regions were harvested throughout the year and processed using lab-scale equipment into oil. The oils’ purity (fatty acid profile, sterols, and triacylglycerols) and quality (free fatty acidity, peroxide value, and specific extinction in UV) were determined in addition to minor components such as tocopherols. It was discovered that growing region and harvest time had a greater impact on fatty acid and sterols profiles than using whole fruit verses only flesh to process the oil. The same standards are set for all avocado oils regardless of the country of origin, this finding indicates it will be important to ensure standards can accommodate oils from different regions. In addition, using poor quality fruit to make oil caused a significant increase in the free fatty acidity compared to using good quality fruit at the time of processing. This work determined a baseline for avocado oil quality parameters by extracting oil from ripe, good quality fruit, which can in turn can inform reasonable limits for avocado oil quality standards.