Evaluation of the Triglyceride Composition of Pomegranate Seed Oil by RP‐HPLC Followed by GC‐MS

Abstract Triglyceride composition and fatty acid profiles of pomegranate seed oil were evaluated by newly developed methods in reverse‐phase‐high performance liquid chromatography (RP‐HPLC) and gas chromatography (GC), respectively. Different compositions of the mobile phase (acetone and acetonitrile) and flow rates for the HPLC system were used to obtain better separation for accurate quantitative analysis. Triglycerides with conjugated fatty acids (CLnAs) were eluted in order of the polarity of their geometrical isomers (c, t, c < t, t, c < t, t, t). The dominant triglyceride was found to be PuPuPu (32.99 %) in pomegranate seed oil, followed by PuPuCa and PuCaCa containing punicic acid and catalpic acid with total triglyceridelevels of 27.72 and 10.11 %, respectively. For fatty acid composition analysis, triglyceride fractions were derivatized into their respective methylesters which were injected into gas chromatography‐mass spectrometry (GC‐MS) to identify and gas chromatography‐flame ionization detector (GC‐FID) to quantify the conjugated fatty acids of each fraction of triglycerides. Punicic acid was found to be dominant (76.57 %) followed by catalpic acid (6.47 %) and β‐eleotearic acid (1.45 %). Pomegranate seed contained greater amounts of conjugated linolenic acids. These results showed that the present study provides more information about the composition of the triglyceride and fatty acid profiles of pomegranate seed oil compared to the reported studies. Therefore, the developed methods in this study can be used for the identification of the triglyceride and fatty acid composition for pomegranate seed oils and some such specials edible oils including CLnA isomers.