Research Article Physicochemical Characteristics of Citrus Seed Oils from Kerman, Iran

Copyright © 2014 Mohammad Reazai et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Recently, there has been a great deal of attention on usage, byproducts, and wastes of the food industry. There have been many studies on the properties of citrus seeds and extracted oil from citrus grown in Kerman, Iran. The rate of oil content of citrus seeds varies between 33.4 % and 41.9%. Linoleic acid (33.2 % to 36.3%) is the key fatty acid found in citrus seeds oil and oleic (24.8 % to 29.3%) and palmitic acids (23.5 % to 29.4%) are the next main fatty acids, respectively. There are also other acids found at trivial rates such as stearic, palmitoleic, and linolenic. With variation between 0.54meg/kg and 0.77mgq/kg in peroxide values of citrus seed oils, acidity value of the oil varies between 0.44 % and 0.72%. The results of the study showed that citrus seeds under study (orange and sour lemon grown in Kerman province) and the extracted oil have the potential of being used as the source of edible oil. 1