Natural antioxidants of the Jaffna variety of &lt;i&gt;Moringa Oleifera&lt;/i&gt; seed oil of Indian origin as compared to other vegetable oils

A G Gopala Krishna,A S Bhatnagar

doi:10.3989/gya.010613

Abstract

The Moringa oleifera crop is grown all over India for its nutritious pods, leaves and seeds. M. oleifera seeds are endowed with a high oil content (~39%) which resembles olive oil because of its high oleic acid content (~65-75%). The objective of the present study was to evaluate the natural antioxidants of crude seed kernel oil from the Jaffna variety of M. oleifera (MSO). Natural antioxidants like tocopherols and phenolics as well as minor compounds such as sterols and carotenoids present in MSO and its radical scavenging activity were measured in comparison to dried coconut kernel (copra) crude oil (CNO), crude sesame oil (SESO), crude niger seed oil (NSO), crude palm oil (CPO), crude rice bran oil (RBO) and commercially refined groundnut oil (GNO). MSO contained 88 ppm of total tocopherols with α- tocopherol (56.2 ppm) being the major tocopherol. MSO also contained 117.9 ppm of total phenolics with gallic acid (48.5 ppm) being the major phenolic. MSO contained fair amounts of sterols (1700.8 ppm) and carotenoids (17.9 ppm). MSO showed an IC 50 value of 35.5 mg mL –1 . This study indicates that MSO has antioxidant characteristics which are better than CNO and comparable to those of GNO.

Highlights

Moringa oleifera is a pan-tropical species and the most widely cultivated species of a monogeneric family, Moringaceae, which is native to the sub-Himalayan tracts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan
The unsaponifiable matter of CNO, crude palm oil (CPO), rice bran oil (RBO), niger seed oil (NSO) and sesame oil (SESO) was found to be in the range of 1.9-57.4 g kg–1 (Table 1)
The results suggest that RBO contains the highest amount of unsaponifiable matter followed by SESO, NSO, MSO, CPO and CNO

Summary

Introduction

Moringa oleifera is a pan-tropical species and the most widely cultivated species of a monogeneric family, Moringaceae, which is native to the sub-Himalayan tracts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. M. oleifera is an important vegetable crop and minor oil seed crop in India, since there is no organized cultivation of moringa crops, its production quantities are not documented. Other countries which cultivate and use moringa crops are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Philippines, Sudan, West, East and South Africa, tropical Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Florida and the Pacific Islands (Sengupta and Gupta, 1970; Ramachandran et al, 1980). The pods, leaves and seeds of these moringa varieties are used for various culinary preparations

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