Physicochemical properties of tobacco seed oil from Iran

In recent years there has been development of non-conventional and underexploited promising plant species as new sources of oils. Many of them contain significant quantities of oils with high proportion of nutritionally, medicinally or industrially desirable fatty acids.Tobacco seeds, grown in the north of Iran, were investigated in this study. The oil, ash and water contents of tobacco seeds alongwith fatty acid composition, acid value, iodine value, peroxide value, saponification value, p-anisidine value, density, viscosity, refractive index, oxidation stability, differential scanning calorimetric and thermogravimetric profiles, UV-Vis, FT-IR, Fluorescence spectra, phenolic compounds and antioxidant activity of the extracted seed oil were analysed. The results showed that the tobacco seeds contained a high amount of oil (~40%). The three major fatty acids in the tobacco seed oil were linoleic (71.35%), oleic (14.57%), and palmitic (8.67%) acids. Tobacco seed oil showed absorbance in the UV-B and UV-C ranges with potential for use as a broad spectrum UV protectant. Tobacco seed oil showed high kinetic stability, as characterized by differential scanning calorimetry. Total phenol content of tobacco seed oil was also higher compared with soybean, falx seed and corn oil. According to the IC50 value (0.438 g/ml), tobacco seed oil can be categorized as an oil with considerable antioxidant potential. This study reveals that tobacco seed oil has a high level of functional lipids and can be used as a new source of oil in different applications.