Variations in fatty acid compositions of the seed oil of Eruca sativa Mill. caused by different sowing periods and nitrogen forms

Background: Eruca is a native plant genus of the South Europe and central Asia where it has been cultivated since centuries. As the genus name implies, the oil is high in erucic acid. Materials and Methods: In this study, our aim was to investigate the effect of sowing periods (autumn and spring) and three forms of the nitrogen-containing fertilizers (manure, calcium nitrate [Ca(NO ₃ ) ₂ , 15.5% N], and ammonium sulphate [(NH ₄ ) ₂ SO ₄ , 21% N]) on fatty acid compositions of the oils obtained from Eruca sativa Mill. seeds cultivated. All oils were obtained by maceration of the seeds with n-hexane at room temperature and converted to their methyl ester derivatives by trans-methylesterification reaction using boron-trifluorur (BF ₃ ). The fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) in the oils were detected by capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Results: All the samples analyzed were found to contain quite high amounts of erucic acid ranging between 46.64-54.79%, followed by oleic (17.86-19.95%), palmitic (7.25-10.97%), linoleic (4.23-9.72%), and linolenic (1.98-3.01%) acids. Conclusion: Our data pointed out that there is a statistically important alteration caused by these applications on the contents of only C12:0 and C14:0 found as the minor fatty acids, whereas no other fatty acids in the samples seemed to be affected by those criteria.