Qualidade do óleo fixo de (Carthamus tinctorius L.) durante o armazenamento

Abstract

Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is an oilseed crop originated from the Asian and African continents. This crop is grown in over 60 countries around the world, with India as the main producer. In Brazil, this crop does not have a significant expression in the economy, due to the lack of technical studies and knowledge about the culture in our environment in relation to cultivation, although specialists have been gaining interest because safflower has oil-rich grains, which are considered important and indispensable for human and animal health. Given these characteristics of the culture and importance of oil, the purpose of the present work was to evaluate the effect of different final water contents after artificial drying on the quality of safflower grains during storage under uncontrolled conditions, by analyzing the quality of the oil. The experiment was realized at the campus of the Federal University of Grande Dourados - MS. Safflower grains were harvested manually at the Experimental Farm of Agricultural Sciences, the initial water content of the grains was determined by drying until they reached water contents of 7.5%. After drying, each grain batch was subdivided into three equivalent portions of approximately 1.0 kg, wich were stored for 200 days in an uncontrolled environment. At 0, 50, 100, 150 and 200 days of storage, grain samples were taken from the packages, which were later submitted to analysis to determine the acidity, iodine, saponification and peroxide indices. About acidity índex there was no significant variation in the values ​​obtained. The iodine index decreased over storage time. The results presented for the saponification index showed no statistical differences for the storage period and humidity conditions tested. However, the peroxide index has changed as a function of storage time. Thus, the storage period leads to oxidation of the main unsaturated fatty acids, which leads to an increase of saturated fatty acids in the total chemical composition.