Amino acids and fatty acids profile of chia (Salvia hispanica L.) and flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) seed

Abstract

The seeds of most plants are rich in various nutrients and can provide a lot of useful health benefits. The objective of this study was to determine and compare differences in fat, fatty acids, crude protein and amino acids concentrations for chia and flax seeds. Study was carried out using brown and gold seeds of Flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) and Chia (Salvia hispanica L.). The mean protein content in tested seeds ranged from 211.8 to 252.5 g/kg dry matter and in chia seed was about 13.10% higher than the average value of crude protein content in brown and gold flax seed (223.25 g/kg dry matter). Differences in the content of individual amino acids among the seeds were not statistically significant (P <0.05), except that for glutamic acid. Percentage of the essential to the total amino acids, which is considered as indicator of protein quality, was 37.87%, 33.76% and 35.18%, for chia, brown and gold flax seed respectively, which demonstrates the high quality of these proteins. The average fat content of flax seeds was about 71.42 g/kg higher than that in chia seed (321.37 g/kg dry matter). The fatty acids composition showed the presence of palmitic, stearic, oleic, linoleic, α- linolenic and arachidic fatty acids in all tested samples. The α-linolenic acid constitutes on average 54.38% of the total fatty acids of flax seeds and 63.79% of chia seed, and for linoleic acid it was 15.30% and 18.89%. All seeds had low n-6 PUFA / n-3 PUFA ratio. Results of our study confirmed the excellent quality of protein and fat in chia seed, brown and gold flax seed samples. There was no significant effect of the flax seed coat colour for all measured values. Chia seed is the richest of n-3 PUFA α-linolenic fatty acid in the vegetable world. Both, flax seed and chia seed are the good choice of healthy food to maintain a balanced serum lipid profile. It must be pointed that flax seeds must be ground to release their nutrients, but chia seeds do not.