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Detection of adulterants from common edible oils by GC–MS

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Abstract

Edible oils play a tremendous role in the human diet. The production and consumption of edible oils have extensively increased due to their nutritional and economic significance. As a result of exponential population growth, the demand for edible oil has prompted adulteration, which has become a global crisis. Adulteration causes a variation in the fatty acid profiles, unique to each oil. The addition of adulterants is associated with gallbladder cancer, epidemic dropsy, cardiovascular diseases, hypercholesterolemia, and several other life-threatening diseases. Hence, monitoring the purity of edible oils at regular intervals has become inevitable. This study is to evaluate the quality of edible oils such as sesame, groundnut, coconut, mustard, sunflower, soybean, and olive oils by screening their fatty acids and secondary metabolites composition using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and thereby identifying the adulterants in comparison between the unrefined and refined oils. The fatty acid profiles of the unrefined oils were found to be in accordance with the literature survey, whereas the commercially available refined oils were mainly adulterated with palmitic, palmitoleic, stearic, and myristic acids. Contrastingly, numerous health-promoting secondary metabolites have been detected in unrefined oil samples. In conclusion, unrefined oils have nutritional values, and authenticity used for human consumption rather than refined edible oils.

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Acknowledgements

The authors greatly acknowledge Dr. K. Ramasamy, Director of Faculty, SRM Institute of Science and Technology for his encouragement and also thank the Department of Biotechnology, School of Bioengineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology for providing the facilities.

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Author notes

  1. Srividya Parthasarathy, Prathyusha Soundararajan, and Nagasathiya Krishnan contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology, School of Bioengineering, College of Engineering and Technology, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur - 603 203, Tamil Nadu, India

    Srividya Parthasarathy, Prathyusha Soundararajan, Nagasathiya Krishnan & Pachaiappan Raman

  2. Department of Medical Research, Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur - 603 203, Tamil Nadu, India

    Kanchana Mala Karuppiah

  3. Research and Development Wing, Sree Balaji Medical College and Hospital (SBMCH), Bharath Institute of Higher Education and Research (BIHER), Chennai – 600044, Tamil Nadu, India

    Dhamodharan Prabhu, Sundarraj Rajamanikandan & Palaniyandi Velusamy

  4. Faculty of Chemical Engineering Technology & Institute of Nano Electronic Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, 02600, Arau, Perlis, Malaysia

    Subash C. B. Gopinath

  5. Office of the Dean Sponsored Research, Publications and Collaborations, AMET University, Kanathur - 603 112, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

    Velmurugan Devadasan

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  1. Srividya Parthasarathy
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  2. Prathyusha Soundararajan
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  10. Pachaiappan Raman
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Contributions

Conceptualization: R. Pachaiappan (RP), Kanchana Mala Karuppiah (KMK); methodology: RP, KMK, Devadasan Velmurugan (DV); formal analysis and investigation: Srividya Parthasarathy (SP), Prathyusha. S (PS), Nagasathiya Krishnan (KN); writing—original draft preparation: SP, PS, RP; writing—review and editing: PS, SP, RP, DV, Dhamodharan Prabhu (DP), Sundarraj Rajamanikandan (SR), Palaniyandi Velusamy (PV), Subash C.B. Gopinath (SG); funding acquisition: No funding, resources: RP, KN, KMK, DV; Supervision: RP.

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Correspondence to Pachaiappan Raman.

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Parthasarathy, S., Soundararajan, P., Krishnan, N. et al. Detection of adulterants from common edible oils by GC–MS. Biomass Conv. Bioref. 13, 15543–15563 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-022-02913-3

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