Date palm fruit (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is commonly consumed around the world and has recently become an economical crop in Eastern Thailand, especially the Barhi cultivar that can be consumed as fresh fruit. To maintain genetic qualities, date palm is populated through cell culture. This leads to high production costs, while access to this technique is limited. Increasing date palm population by simple seed planting is currently of interest as an alternative for local farmers. Nevertheless, information on nutritive values, bioactive compounds, and health-promoting bioactivities of seed originating from date palm fruit is unavailable. Effects of different planting origins (cell culture origin (CO) and seed origin (SO)) of date palm fruits at the Khalal stage of Barhi cultivar were investigated for nutritive values, bioactive compounds, and in vitro health-promoting properties via key enzyme inhibitions against obesity (lipase), diabetes (α-amylase, α-glucosidase, and dipeptidyl peptidase-IV), Alzheimer’s disease (cholinesterases and β-secretase), and hypertension (angiotensin-converting enzyme). Waste seeds as a by-product from date palm production were also examined regarding these properties to increase seed marketing opportunities for future food applications and other health-related products. CO and SO exhibited insignificant differences in energy, fat, and carbohydrate contents. SO had higher protein, dietary fiber, vitamin A, vitamin E, and calcium contents than CO, while CO contained higher contents of fructose, glucose and maltose. Higher phenolic contents in SO led to greater enzyme inhibitory activities than CO. Interestingly, seeds of date palm fruits mostly contained higher nutritive values than the flesh. No carotenoids were detected in seeds but higher phenolic contents resulted in greater enzyme inhibitory activities than recorded for fruit flesh. Results suggest that appropriate planting of date palm can support the development of novel date palm fruit products, leading to expansion of economic opportunities and investment in date palm fruit agriculture.

Date palm fruit (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is generally consumed in form of dry fruits (Tamr stage); however, fresh date palm fruit in Khalal stage is currently of interest due to its high total phenolic contents (TPCs) and antioxidant activities. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the water based extraction conditions such as temperature (30-90°C), shaking time (0.5-6 hours) and solid-to-liquid ratio (100-500 mg/mL) of date palm fruit in Khalal stage. This will help to establish extraction protocol for future food applications. Under optimized extraction conditions, TPCs and antioxidant activities of cell culture originated (CO) and seed originated (SO) date palm fruit were compared to examine the effect of cultivar variation. The results suggest that optimization of extraction conditions was reached using the concentration of 100 mg/ mL, extraction temperature of 50°C, and shaking time of one hour. Under these extraction conditions, CO exhibited TPCs of 3.47±0.33 mg GAE/g DW as well as antioxidant activities of 0.0025±0.00, 16.13±0.81 and 123.21±9.77 µmol TE/g DW measured by DPPH radical scavenging, FRAP and ORAC assays, respectively. Interestingly, SO exhibited higher TPCs (3.87±0.23 mg GAE/g DW) and antioxidant activities (0.0021±0.00, 19.23±0.80 and 185.68±9.29 µmol TE/g DW by DPPH radical scavenging, FRAP and ORAC assays, respectively).The findings from this study will promote consumption of date palm fruits in Khalal stage as healthy food and support its future development for food. Also, this will enhance the growth of date palm fruit with its attendant economic benefits.