Fatty Acid Composition, Phytochemistry, Antioxidant Activity on Seed Coat and Kernel of Paeonia ostii from Main Geographic Production Areas.

Zheng-An Liu,Qing-Yan Shu,Ning-Ning Tong,Si-Qi Men,Muhammad Imran,Li-Ping Peng

doi:10.3390/foods9010030

Abstract

Paeonia ostii is an important woody oil plant cultivated in China on a large scale. Its seed oil is enriched with unsaturated fatty acids and a high content of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which are beneficial to human health. The aim of this research is to determine the qualitative traits characteristic of P. ostii seed from various production areas in China. In this study, seed quality traits were evaluated on the basis of proximate composition, content of fatty acids, tocopherol, secondary metabolites, and the antioxidant activity of seed coat (PSC) and kernel (PSK). A high content of total fatty acids (298.89–399.34 mg g−1), crude protein (16.91%–22.73%), and total tocopherols (167.83–276.70 μg g−1) were obtained from PSK. Significant differences were found in the content of palmitic acids (11.31–14.27 mg g−1), stearic acids (2.42–4.24 mg g−1), oleic acids (111.25–157.63 mg g−1), linoleic acids (54.39–83.59 mg g−1), and ALA (99.85–144.71 mg g−1) in the 11 main production areas. Eight and seventeen compounds were detected in PSC and PSK, respectively. A significantly higher content of total phenols was observed in PSC (139.49 mg g−1) compared with PSK (3.04 mg g−1), which was positively related to antioxidant activity. This study indicates that seeds of P. ostii would be a good source of valuable oil and provides a basis for seed quality evaluation for the production of edible oil and potential ALA supplements from the promising woody oil plant.

Highlights

Plant seeds are a source of food, food ingredients, and supplements for human dietary needs in daily life [1]
Seed proximate composition of P. ostii seed kernels (PSK) and PSC from 11 production areas is shown in Table 1, which indicates that significant differences existed in detected samples
The results indicated that the average seed coat rate was 35.17 ± 2.64% and ranged from 31.13 ± 0.60% (P2) to 38.95 ± 0.07% (P10), which indicated that the coat accounted for 1/3 of the seed

Summary

Introduction

Plant seeds are a source of food, food ingredients, and supplements for human dietary needs in daily life [1]. Most of the seeds produce proteins, carbohydrates, numerous secondary metabolites, and can be used for edible oils [2,3]. Edible oils, such as olive oil, corn oil, and soybean oil are used for human diets and contain lipids in the form of fatty acids (FAs). ALA is the most important n-3 fatty acid from vegetables from a dietary perspective. In traditional vegetable oils, such as soybean (8.95%), canola (9.74%), corn germ (0.55%), sesame (0.32%), and olive (0.57%), n-3 fatty acids represent less than 10%, and

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