Lipophilic phytochemicals from banana fruits of several Musa species

Carla Vilela,Sónia A.O Santos,Juan J Villaverde,Lúcia Oliveira,Alberto Nunes,Nereida Cordeiro,Carmen S.R Freire,Armando J.D Silvestre

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2014.04.050

Carla Vilela, Sónia A.O Santos + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2014.04.050

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Abstract

The chemical composition of the lipophilic extract of ripe pulp of banana fruit from several banana cultivars belonging to the Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana species (namely ‘Chinese Cavendish’, ‘Giant Cavendish’, ‘Dwarf Red’, ‘Grand Nain’, ‘Eilon’, ‘Gruesa’, ‘Silver’, ‘Ricasa’, ‘Williams’ and ‘Zelig’) was studied by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry for the first time. The banana cultivars showed similar amounts of lipophilic extractives (ca. 0.4% of dry material weight) as well as qualitative chemical compositions. The major groups of compounds identified in these fractions were fatty acids and sterols making up 68.6–84.3% and 11.1–28.0%, respectively, of the total amount of lipophilic components. Smaller amounts of long chain aliphatic alcohols and α-tocopherol were also identified. These results are a relevant contribution for the valorisation of these banana cultivars as sources of valuable phytochemicals (ω-3 and ω-6 fatty acids, and sterols) with well-established beneficial nutritional and health effects.

Highlights

Musa is a plant genus from the family Musaceae and order Zingiberales (Arvanitoyannis & Mavromatis, 2009) that produces the fourth most important food crop in the world after rice, wheat and maize, i.e. bananas and plantains (Sharrock & Frison, 1998). the genus Musa is composed of four taxonomic sections, namely Australimusa, Callimusa, Musa and Rhodochlam, most cultivated varieties originate from intra- and inter-specific hybridisations between two diploid wild species of the section Musa: Musa acuminata (A genome) and Musa balbisiana (B genome) (Lim, 2012)
The low lipidic content of these 10 cultivars is in agreement with previously published results obtained for other Musa varieties (Goldstein & Wick, 1969; Oliveira et al, 2008), and the well-known low fat content of this fruit. These contents are of the same order of those found on other tropical fruits, e.g. in the ripe pulp of mango fruits (Vilela et al, 2013)
The present work represents the first study on the lipophilic components from the ripe pulp of ten banana cultivars of the M

Summary

Introduction

Musa is a plant genus from the family Musaceae and order Zingiberales (Arvanitoyannis & Mavromatis, 2009) that produces the fourth most important food crop in the world after rice, wheat and maize, i.e. bananas and plantains (Sharrock & Frison, 1998). The genus Musa is composed of four taxonomic sections, namely Australimusa, Callimusa, Musa (formerly known as Eumusa) and Rhodochlam, most cultivated varieties (cultivars) originate from intra- and inter-specific hybridisations between two diploid wild species of the section Musa: Musa acuminata (A genome) and Musa balbisiana (B genome) (Lim, 2012). The most important banana cultivars are triploid AAA and plantains are mostly AAB, ABB or BBB (Ball, Vrydaghs, Van Den Hauwe, Manwaring, & De. Langhe, 2006). Due to the difficulty of breeding infertile plants, only a few cultivars have been introduced in the last 50 years.

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