Fatty acid, phytosterols and tochopherol content of grape seed oil from juicer by-products

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Grape seed oil has high antioxidant capacity as well as physiological and biological effects. This study aims to evaluate the fatty acid profile, phytosterol and tochopherol content of grape seed oil originally extracted from grape juice processing by-products. METHODS: Oil samples were methylestered and saponified for gas chromatography (GC) analysis of fatty acids and sterols were analysed by the same GC with different column. Tocopherol contents were determined by high performance liquid chromatography. RESULTS: The results showed Linoleic acid as the predominant fatty acid containing 64.22% of the total fatty acids. Sterol profile of grape seed oil contained beta-sitosterol (74.74%), campesterol (10.64%), stigmasterol (10.48%) and others with lower concentrations. In addition, there were no significant differences between the total and individual sterol contents of the three samples (P<0.05) as they were from the same variety of the grape (Red-Shahani). Tocopherol content as the mean for all analyzed samples was 227.36 mg/kg without significant differences between the three samples (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: The results indicated that this source could be important for grape seed oil production as healthy oil which lowers juice processing costs, as well. On the other hand, such information about these valuable chemicals could lead to produce new functional food.