Physicochemical Characterization and Fatty Acid Profiling of Pachira Insignis Seed Oil by Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

Edible fats and oils as important components of food and food products have been commercially sourced for nutritional, industrial and medicinal applications. The demand for quality oils has lately increased due to population growth and education on the numerous health benefits of the so-called good oils. There has, therefore, been a wide gap between demand and supply of quality oils even though there are myriads of underutilized oil producing plants available to be tapped as sources of quality oils. The purpose of this work was to extract oils from the seeds of Pachira insignis, to determine the percentage oil yield, physicochemical properties and fatty acid compositions. The seed oil was extracted using pressurized liquid extraction technique and percentage oil content was determined. Physicochemical properties were characterized using standard methods whilst Fatty acid content of the oil was profiled using Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). The mean percentage oil yields obtained was 38.9 %w/w ± 1.015. The results of physicochemical properties determined gave a range of 0.909 - 0.915 for specific gravity, 0.898 - 0.900 g/cm3 for density, 1.465 - 1.473 for refractive index and 0.670 – 0.674 % respectively for moisture content. The range for free fatty acid and acid value ranged from 3.069 – 3.097 % and 6.107 – 6.163 mg KOH g-1 respectively. Finally, the ranges obtained for iodine value, Peroxide values and saponification number were 47.915 – 50.045 g 100g-1, 0.447 – 0.449 meq O2/kg and 185.492 – 187.498 mg KOH g-1 respectively. The recorded percentage unsaturated fatty acid content of the seed oil was 72.26 %. The results of the analysis show that, Pachira insignis seeds contain enough oil content with physicochemical properties that indicate their suitability for use as domestic and industrial applications. The oils also possess high content of unsaturated fatty acids indicating that the oils are high grade oils. The seed oil can therefore serve as a potential source of commercial oil for nutritional, medicinal and industrial purposes.