GA 2018

We have investigated the fatty acid composition and antioxidant activity in the seeds of 100 safflower accessions collected from India. The oil was recovered using in a soxhlet extraction method. The fatty acids were analyzed using gas chromatography [1]. Antioxidant activity was measured using 2,2′-azinobis-(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS) and 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging assays. The total polyphenol content (TPC) was estimated using Folin–Ciocalteu method [2]. The oil was ranged between 15.82 and 32.23% across the entire accessions. Linolenic, palmitic, and stearic acid ranged from 0.02 to 2.00%, 4.84 to 7.57%, and 1.30 to 3.27%, respectively. Oleic and linoleic acid showed wide variation from 10.69 to 75.73% and 15.54 to 79.87%, respectively, compared to other fatty acids. TPC, ABTS, and DPPH assay results were in the range 5.07 to 52.08 µg gallic acid equivalent (GAE) /mg dried extract (DE), 4.64 to 26.95 µg trolox equivalent (TE) /mg DE, 3.40 to 74.97 µg ascorbic acid equivalent (ASCE) /mg DE, respectively. The cluster analysis showed that accessions were segregated into three clusters. Group II, comprising 11 accessions, had high oleic acid composition. However, group III which contained 25 accessions had high antioxidant activity safflower accessions compared to other groups. TPC showed a significant positive correlation (r = 0.875) with ABTS. The first two principal components had accounted for the 60.75% of the total variance. Our results showed that K184660 and K184530 could be used as a source of valuable natural antioxidant materials, whereas IT300325, IT300326, and K185831 which exhibited high oleic acid composition, could be useful to develop new functional oil materials. [1] Velasco, L., Goffman, F. D., & Becker, H. C. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolutio 1998; 45: 371-382. [2] Yu, L., Haley, S., Perret, J., Harris, M., Wilson, J., & Qian, M. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2002; 50: 1619-1624.