An investigation of chemical composition, nutritional and physicochemical properties of oil from camelina seed cultivated in Iran and its comparison with canola and sunflower oils

In recent years, Camelina (Camelina Sativa) has gained an extensive attention due to its properties as a new source of edible oil. Camelina seeds contain significant amounts of oil and essential fatty acids with nutritional and industrial importance. In this study, fatty acid composition, physicochemical properties, oxidative stability index, as well as atherogenicity and thrombogenicity of oil from camelina seed grown in Iran were investigated and compared with those of canola and sunflower seed oils extracted by cold pressing method. The dominant fatty acids of camelina, canola and sunflower oils were linolenic (30.429 ± 0.443), oleic (62.494 ± 0.187%) and linoleic (62.062 ± 0.252%) acids, respectively. Camelina oil w:as char:acterized by low values of atherogenicity (0.061 ± 0.001) and thrombogenicity (0.061 ± 0.001) and relatively high hypocholesterolemic to hypercholesterolemic ratio (12.314 ± 0.170). In addition, camelina oil had the lowest ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 (0.729 ±0.028), and the highest calculated oxidizability value (8.47 ±0.079) and monounsaturated to polyunsaturated fatty acids ratio (0.628 ±0.003). These results indicate the appropriate nutritional properties but high oxidative susceptibility of camelina oil compared to sunflower and canola oils. The peroxide and anisidine values of camelina, canola and sunflower oils were found to be 0.8 ±0.028, 0.77 ±0.042, 1.12 ± 0.057, and 0.21 ±0.014, 0.18 ±0.028, 0.28 ±0.000, respectively. Therefore, the stability of camelina oil was higher than expected despite the high level of omega-3 fatty acids, which might be justified by its high levels of tocopherols and other antioxidant compounds.