Effect of Solvent Extraction Technique on Fatty Acid Composition of Pistachio Oil

Pistachio oil has important nutritional and therapeutic properties because of high concentration of essential fatty acids. The extraction method used to obtain natural compounds from raw matter is critical for product quality and especially protection of nutrition value of them. The study was conducted to compare fatty acid composition of pistachio oil extracted by two conventional procedures: soxhlet extraction (Sox) and maceration. Different solvents: n-Hexan (Hx), dichloromethane (DCM), ethyl acetate (EtAc) and ethanol (EtOH) in term of polarity index was used. The higher unsaturated fatty acid (88.493%) was obtained by Sox with EtAc. Although linoleic acid had higher concentration (36.32%) in mac method. Sox method extracted highest concentration of oleic and linolenic acids (51.99% and 0.385% respectively).