Development of Novel Cost Efficient Process for Extraction of Sterols and Tocopherols from Wild Plant Seed

The present work focuses on the compositional characterization of tamarind and sea buckthorn seed oils, which have a wide range of uses in the cosmetic, pharmaceutical and food sectors. The characterization includes the analysis of tocopherols, sterols and fatty acid profile in both oils. The tamarind and sea buckthorn oils were converted to fatty acid methyl ester and the fatty acid composition was analyzed by using gas chromatography technique. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of tocopherols performed using high performance liquid chromatography. This study reveals that the oil samples consist of a variety of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids, such as myristic acid (0 and 0.4%), palmitic acid (11 and 30.5%), palmitoleic (0 and 39.6%) stearic acid (0 and 0.5%), oleic acid (18.3 and 26.1%), linoleic acid (45.8 and 2.1%), linolenic acid (4.1% and 0.5%), arachidic acid (1.8% and 0%) behenic acid (9.6 and 0%) and lignoceric acid (9.4 and 0%). Additionally, the analysis detects various tocopherol components, including α-tocopherol (21.4 and 32.6%), β-tocopherol (14.49 and 7.24%), γ-tocopherol (53.72 and 45.66%), δ-tocopherol (9.64 and 9.11%) and α-tocotrienol (0 and 5.13%) in tamarind and sea buckthorn oil, respectively.