¹³C NMR REGIOSPECIFIC ANALYSIS OF OLIVE OLEA EUROPAEA L.’ OIL TRIGLYCERIDES

The assumption that natural triacylglycerols comprise enantiomers and racemic molecular species of triesters of glycerol with different three long-chain carboxylic acids, accounts for the primary interest in studying the mechanism of fatty acid distribution on the three glycerol positions.
The use of carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy has been successfully applied to carry out the regiospecific analysis of triacylglycerols.
The high resolution ¹³C NMR spectroscopy allowed the determination of the fatty acid compositions without distinguishing, however, the homologous chains, i.e.
C16:0 and C18:0 that appear as a single resonance, and their distribution between the 1(3)- and 2- glycerol positions (no differentiation of the sn-1 and sn-3 positions is achieved). The compositions of the two different pools of acyl chains which enter the 1(3)- and 2- glycerol positions, respectively, and the specificity of unsaturated chains for glycerol 2-position, have been calculated.
The compositional data for 1(3)- and 2- positions appeared to be correlated to differences in fatty acid compositions of the whole olive oil triglyceride, whereas acyl chain 2-specificity seemed not to be strictly correlated to oleyl and linoleyl chain concentration.
The study of the structure of olive oil triglycerides has been extended to the determination of triglyceride molecular species by means of high performance liquid chromatography.

IV International Symposium on Olive Growing

G. Vlahov, C. Schiavone, N. Simone, M. Agamennone

¹³C NMR, regiospecific analysis, triglycerides, olive oil

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2002.586.123