IntroductionCaper is a plant with medicinal and aromatic properties. It is a long-lasting shruby plant that belongs to the Capparaceae family; capers occurs in various types (more than 350) and grows naturally in all the continents in many different regions of the world [1][2][3]. It is a tropical/subtropical plant [1,4]. The caper plant, which is called bubu, gebre, gabar, gevil, kapari, keper, kebere, turşuotu and Şebellah in differetnt parts of Turkey, is an economically valuable plant. In various regions of the world different organs of caper species have been profitable for several purposes since ancient times. Young shoots, flower buds, and fruit are used for human nutrition. Capers have very important roles in the food industry; the flower buds are stored in brine and have become a costly product during recent years [2,[5][6][7][8][9]. Capers have been an important economic plant in Spain and Italy for the last 3 decades [1,2,6].The species has been cultivated from varieties growing wild in large parts of Turkey [2], and product technology has been developed [10,11]. There is limited information on physical and chemical properties of seeds of Caper plants used as food and as a condiment [3,4,7,12]. Also, no study on technological properties of seeds of C.spinosa plants were carried out hitherto.But limited study was made on C.ovata seeds [9]. The aim of this work is to establish the proximate composition, and some technological properties such as projected area, bulk density, seed density, 1000 seed mass, static and dynamic coefficient of friction, etc.
Material and Methods
MaterialRipened caperberries (fruit) of wild growing plants of C.ovata and C.spinosa were collected from Konya (Selçuklu) and Mersin (Silifke), respectively. The seeds were obtained from ripened fruit. The seed samples were put into paper bags for transport to the laboratory. The seeds were dried under the air condition, and cleaned in an air screen cleaner to remove all foreign matter such as dust, dirt and chaff as well as immature and damaged seeds. The initial moisture content of seeds was determined by using a Standard method [13]. The remaining material was packed in a 2000 ml hermetic glass vessel and kept in cold storage until use.
Chemical propertiesChemical properties of both caper plant seeds picked in August were analysed according to AOAC [14]. The dried seeds were finely powdered. The oil was extracted with petroleum ether (50 o C) in a soxhlet apparatus. The extract was evaporated in vacuum. The lipid extract was collected in a flask. The extracted lipid was weighed to determine the oil content and stored under nitrogen at 4 o C for further analyses.
AbstractThe physical and chemical properties of seeds of Capparis spinosa var spinosa and Capparis ovata Desf var. canescens (Heywood) were determined. Seeds were evaluated for dry matter, crude protein, crude oil, crude fibre, crude energy and ash. Contents of Al, Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Na, P and Zn in both the seeds were also determined by Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Em...
