Abstract
With the progresses of oilseed industry, an important interest is currently being focused on exploiting novel and underutilized sources for vegetable oils. Being so far the less studied part in fig fruits, seeds separated from four fig cultivars were assessed for their oil content, fatty acids identification, total phenolics and invitro antioxidant analysis. A one-way Anova yielded statistically significant differences for all parameters, with the exception of pentadecylic, margaric and arachidic acids besides the total saturated fatty acids. Fig seeds presented a yellow colored oil, of which the content ranged from 21.54 ± 1.71 to 28.52 ± 0.62%. Gas liquid chromatography analysis of the seed oil showed high percentages of linolenic acid in the four cultivars ranging from 38.43 ± 0.01 to 43.57 ± 0.04, followed by linoleic acid (28.9 ± 0.06–34.5 ± 0.04%). Palmitic acid and stearic acid were the dominating saturated fatty acids in all samples, where the amounts were in the range from 8.54 ± 0.04 to 9.05 ± 0.06% and from 2.59 ± 0.13 to 3.3% respectively. The efficiency of the desaturation from oleic acid to linoleic acid estimated within desaturation pathway, was higher among all cultivars than the efficiency of the desaturation from linoleic acid to linolenic acid. This explains the large increase of 18:3 concentration in all samples. The local cultivar ‘C11A21’ exhibited the highest total unsaturated fatty acids and the lowest level of saturated fatty acids, while the cultivar ‘White Adriatic’ combined the most relevant phenolics content, antioxidant activity and half maximum inhibitory concentration. All sampled oil possessed an important phenolics content that displayed variable levels of antioxidant activity. The objective of this study is to bring new data on the biochemical attributes of fig seeds as a new source oil that can be used for nutritional, pharmaceutical and cosmetic purposes.
Highlights
Demand for novel sources of oil in pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries is gaining an increasing importance, since they are valuable natural sources of nutritional bioactive compounds (Górnas and Rudzińska, 2016)
Compared to Opuntia ficus-indica seeds that presented a range of oil content of 5.4–9.9% (Taoufik et al, 2015), the fig seeds oil (FSO) content was found much higher (Fig. 1)
Being so far the less studied part of fig fruit, the seeds were found to be an important source of unsaturated oil with important antioxidants activity
Summary
Demand for novel sources of oil in pharmaceutical, cosmetic and food industries is gaining an increasing importance, since they are valuable natural sources of nutritional bioactive compounds (Górnas and Rudzińska, 2016). A number of studies have investigated the relationship between the dietary intake of unsaturated fatty acids and coronary heart disease (Chougui et al, 2013) Apart from their nutritive role in human diet, lipids are utilized as food ingredients in delivering better texture, imparting flavor and mouth feel in new formulation (Rosianski et al, 2016). The research has been directed towards essential fatty acids and natural anti-oxidants in the fruits’ seeds (Chougui et al, 2013) For this reason, many fruits’ seeds have been studied for potential industrial or food uses such as newer sources of bioactive compounds. A novel source for industrial oils, such as Opuntia ficus-indica, papaya, honeydew, mangosteen, rambutan, durian, date palm, etc. (Raihana et al, 2015)
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