Abstract
Almonds are the tasty seeds of Prunus dulcis plants globally appreciated for the pleasant palatability and remarkable nutritional value, therefore it is very spread as snack and as basic ingredient of the confectionery products. The HR-MAS-NMR is a simple spectroscopy able to directly and quickly explore the chemical composition of powdered seed samples dispersed in D2O. 1H spectra witness the remarkable presence of triglyceride fatty esters together with sucrose; other minor water soluble metabolites are also detectable. This very rough approach is effectively providing chemical profiles featuring almond samples. In this analysis we were able to statistically distinguish the “Avola” almonds from other marketed products submitted to the same analysis. This is just a first investigation based on the main compounds but it might pave the way toward the quantitative evaluation of many other compounds in the almond therefore implementing the HR-MAS-NMR knowledge of these precious seeds.
Highlights
Almonds (Prunus Dulcis) belong to the Rosaceae family and are globally appreciated for their iew sensory and health features; as it is an important element of the Mediterranean diet and main ingredient of many confectionery industries, almond trees are the most grown on a global basis (Siriwardhana Wijeratne et al 2006; Chen et al 2005)
Provided that all the analyzed commercial samples present a chemical fingerprint compatible with a good quality food product, Sicilian “Avola” almonds look featured by higher SUC relative levels and by a rather high relative presence of O among fatty esters in spite of rather low relative level of L di-unsatured fatty esters
To quickly identify the differences among the almond samples we have run the simple statistical analysis by principal components (PCA); as we had just 24 samples we have reduced the number of ee quantitative variables to the main four species
Summary
Almonds (Prunus Dulcis) belong to the Rosaceae family and are globally appreciated for their iew sensory and health features; as it is an important element of the Mediterranean diet and main ingredient of many confectionery industries, almond trees are the most grown on a global basis (Siriwardhana Wijeratne et al 2006; Chen et al 2005). Almonds are a rich source of essential fatty acids, carbohydrate and protein and is a highly nutritional source of vitamins, minerals (Gallier et al.2012) and antioxidant species claimed to slow aging processes (Franklin et al 2017). This accounts for the careful chemical analyses of almonds aimed to elucidate the beneficial effects of derived products upon the human health (Zeeshan 2010; Geng et al 2016)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
