Combination of natural strategies to improve the oxidative stability of echium seed oil

Abstract

Echium seed oil is an alternative source of omega 3 fatty acids but it is highly susceptible to oxidation. A combination of three natural strategies was proposed in this study aiming to improve the oxidative stability of echium oil obtained by pressing (PO) or solvent extraction (PSO), kept in the storage condition for 180 days or during the consumption for 30 days. Our results showed that the reduction of temperature was sufficient to keep the oil stable during storage for both samples. During the consumption time, the best stability was achieved by adding a mixture of antioxidants, composed of sinapic (500 ppm), ascorbic (250 ppm), and citric (150 ppm) acids, and/or 20% of high oleic sunflower oil. The combined strategies promoted a 34 to 80% reduction of peroxide value and 0 to 85% reduction of malondialdehyde concentrations in the samples, showing to be a feasible and natural alternative to improve the oxidative stability of echium oil.Practical ApplicationOur study successfully applied an optimized combination of simple and low‐cost strategies to enhance the chemical stability of echium seed oil. As the use of echium oil expands around the world, the oil industry and final consumers may benefit from our results to increase the oil shelf‐life.

Chemical characterization of Echium plantagineum seed oil obtained by three methods of extraction

“…Although MDA of the HYD sample was higher, it agreed with the values found in other edible oils (Custodio-Mendoza et al, 2019). The higher oxidative susceptibility of echium oil has been reported in previous studies carried out in our group (Espinosa et al, 2015;Nogueira et al, 2019;Roschel et al, 2021).…”

“…In our last study, both oils obtained by screw pressing or SOLV were protected from oxidation only by decreasing the storage temperature (Roschel et al, 2021). When the temperature reduction was not possible, antioxidants and a mixture with high oleic oil were applied to protect the echium oil from oxidation.…”