Affiliations: [a] Laboratoire des Sciences Fondamentales, Université Amar Telidji, BP 37G, Laghouat 03000, Algeria. e-mail: med_yousfi@hotmail.com
| [b] Equipe Phytochimie, UMR CNRS 6223 Institut des Sciences Moléculaires de Marseille, Université Paul Cézanne (Aix-Marseille III), boite 461 Faculté des Sciences de Saint-Jérôme, Marseille, France | [c] Laboratoire de Biosciences, Université Paul Cézanne (Aix-Marseille III), Faculté des Sciences et Technique Saint Jérôme, Marseille, France
Abstract: The main focus of the present work is the analytical study of the fatty acid, triglyceride (TAG) and tocopherol composition of oil extract from the fruit of Algerian tree Argania spinosa. The four dominant fatty acids (FA) found in the oil are: oleic C18:1 (52.86%), linoleic C18:2 (25.0%), palmitic C16:0 (14.65%) and stearic C18:0 (7.06%). The distribution of FA between the sn-2 and sn-1,3 positions of TAG from the oil was also determined. Unsaturated FA showed a preference for the internal position, as generally found in vegetable oils. The TAG composition was calculated using the lipase hydrolysis. The oil was found to contain trisaturated (0.47%), disaturated (9.3%), monosaturated (43.95%) and triunsaturated (45.20%) FA. Flash chromatography with solvent of increasing polarity yielded 83.42% neutral lipids, 1.56% glycolipids and 2.09% phospholipids. The oil was characterised by a relatively high amount of tocopherols (1027.8 mg/kg). The (γ+β)-tocopherols were the major isomers, with the rest being α- and δ-tocopherols.
