Fatty acids have a great metabolic and structural importance. Evaluation of fatty acid composition of peppers is still incomplete. Pulps and seeds from six varieties of the genus Capsicum were evaluated in this work with respect to their contents in fatty acids. A total of 25 different fatty acids, including some with odd number of carbons were identified in the samples. The most abundant fatty acids were palmitic (16:0), oleic (18:1n-9) and linoleic (18:2n-6) acids. The polyunsaturated:saturated fatty acid (PUFA/SFA) ratios for all peppers were high due to the elevated amounts of polyunsaturated acids, particularly linoleic acid. In the pulps, the omega-6/omega-3 ratios ranging from 1.28 to 4.33, were relatively adequate if one considers that ratios between 0.25 and 1.0 in the human diet are regarded as highly appropriate. In the seeds, the levels of omega-3 were very low whereas the levels of omega-6 were high, leading to very inadequate omega-6/omega-3 ratios ranging from 74.2 to 279.6. Principal component analysis (PCA) explained 93.49% of the total variance of the data. Considering the PUFA/SFA ratio and omega-6/omega-3 ratio, our data suggest that, among the peppers of the genus Capsicum evaluated in this work, the bell pepper and orange habanero pepper present the best nutritional characteristics concerning fatty acid composition.
Polyunsaturated:saturated ratio; omega-6/omega-3 ratio; multivariate analysis
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