Abstract
Macauba is an oleaginous palm species from Latin America. It is a rich source of vegetable oil with diverse benefits. However, there are several gaps in assuring post-harvest oil quality of the mesocarp. Thus, ripe fruits were stored at room temperature for 60 days before oil extraction to evaluate fruit and mesocarp oil quality attributes. Physical (decay incidence, water activity), biochemical (specific activity of lipase), physicochemical (acidity and peroxide indices, molar absorptivity at K232 and K270, oxidative stability, total carotene content and mesocarp colour) analyses were carried out. Results show that nonlinear sigmoid response was obtained for most of the parameters evaluated. Decaying reactions related to microorganism’s growth, free fatty acid release and oxidation took place along storage. However, the overall oil quality was in the acceptable limits up to 20 days of storage. It is much further than palm oil, the main source of oil in the world.
Highlights
IntroductionMart] is a single stemmed spiny palm widely distributed in tropical and subtropical America
Mesocarp water activity (Maw) was significantly (P < 0.0001) different along periods of storage following a nonlinear sigmoid trend with R2 of 98.2% (Fig. 1a)
At the 60th day of storage, measure water activity (Maw) was reduced only by 14.4% (0.8341aw). This value indicated that there were favourable conditions for microbial growth to take place, mainly fungus and yeasts that could be related to fruit decay and oil quality degradation
Summary
Mart] is a single stemmed spiny palm widely distributed in tropical and subtropical America. Mesocarp (pulp) portion provides the majority of the macauba fruit oil and it is featured by high water content that challenges to store and process the fruits. Macauba fresh fruit presents itself high quality mesocarp oil, even when it is dried immediately after harvesting, if good practices of harvest and processing are applied (Nunes et al, 2015)
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