Detection and determination of antioxidant compounds of seed oil of Capparis spinosa L. in Iran

This paper is the first report on detection and determination of antioxidant compounds in seed oil of medicinal and edible shrub of Capparis spinosa L. collected from Dashte-Moghan. The results are expressed as the mean of three separate replications. Seed oil was extracted by hexane in a soxhelt apparatus and 2.36% was recorded as the total percentage of unsaponifiable matter. Detection and determination of some of the components of the unsaponifiable matter which have antioxidant properties shows that 0.27 % of the oil is related to sterols. β-sitosterol (60%), campestrol (13%) and stigmasterol (10%) are as the most abundant sterols and this oil has a great potential source of -avenasterol (7%). Moreover, the sterol composition of this oil is comparable to peanut oil and olive oil. Total content of tocopherols and tocotrienols was 93.43 ppm which is too close to olive oil. In addition, -isomer is predominant tocopherol. This oil is rich of beta-carotene (280mg/kg) that is close to the unbleached palm stearin. The total phenolic compounds were ignorable.