Sesame: Its uses, botany, cytogenetics, and origin

Abstract

Oil-yielding species are among the most useful plants, since vegetable oils are put to such a great variety of uses in cooking, toiletry, medicine, lighting, rituals and industry. Oils are present in almost any organ of the plant: roots, stems, bark, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds. Vegetable oils are classified into essential (volatile) oils and fatty oils and waxes (22). The former evaporate or volatilize on contact with air, are pleasant tasting, and have strong aromatic odours. The latter are bland and lacking in taste, odour, and the antiseptic qualities of essential oils. There are four classes of vegetable fatty oils: drying, semi-drying, non-drying, and fats, based on their ability to dry on absorbing atmospheric oxygen and consistency. The oil of sesame is classed as a semi-drying oil. Sesame is among the important oil-yielding plants (Table I). Its importance is proportionately more than its share of production because of its concentration in some regions of the world and its many uses as compared to other oil-yielding crops. The area and production of sesame in different countries of the world are given in Table II. It is essentially a crop of the tropics. Most sesame is used for its seed and for the oil in its seed. The oil content of the seed is high, up to 60%, but it contains also up to 25% proteins, with an exceptionally high amount of methionine. This is a very favourable feature as an additional food element (8). The chemical and biological properties of sesame seed and oil have been summarized by Joshi (26). The following account on these aspects is taken mainly from Joshi (26) and Budowski and Markley (11). An approximate analysis of sesame seed is given in Table III.