With increasing awareness about skin cancer and its relation to UV radiation, there is much focus on sunscreen agents and products. Sunscreens provide protection by absorbing, reflecting and / or scattering the radiation. Sunscreens are rated according to their effectiveness by sun protection factor (SPF). The present study evaluates ultraviolet (UV) absorption ability of Citrullus colocynthis (Bitter Apple, Indrayani) seed oil, Punica granatum (Pomegranate) seed oil and few other vegetable fixed oils. The in-vitro SPF is determined according to the spectrophotometric method of Mansur et al. The UV absorbances of alcoholic solutions of the oils were studied by UV spectrophotometer in the range of 290 nm to 320 nm at 5 nm increments. The in-vitro test results show that Pomegranate seed oil shows an SPF at par with synthetic sunscreens at 1.0 % level, with Indrayani seed oil following closely.

Vitamin E, the fat soluble vitamin is present naturally in some foods and added in food supplements, nutraceuticals etc due to its vital biological function as an antioxidant. Various methods are available for the analysis of vitamin E. Especially High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and Gas Chromatography (GC) are exclusively used for the quantitative evaluation of vitamin E, which has also identified the four different isomeric forms of this vitamin. The rate of losses of this vitamin during food processing and analysis, in addition to their transient dynamics, presents complexities in developing a highly sensitive procedure for their separations. Though effective, HPLC instrument is expensive and comparatively cumbersome. In this prospective, the study was to evaluate the usefulness of High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) in the analysis of vitamin E. There are methods available using Thin Layer Chromatography for its analysis, but they are not sensitive enough to identify the isomeric forms of vitamin E. In this HPTLC method, the different isomeric forms of vitamin E - α, β, γ and δ were identified. This technique shall be considered as an alternative to the other methods such as HPLC and GC.