Palmas en Cuba: fuentes de aceite y ácidos grasos sin explotar.

A compilation of the studies carried out in the Center of Natural Products of the National Center for Scientific Research about the obtaining of crude oil from 11 species of palms (Arecaceae) that grow in Cuba (Veitchia merrillii, Caryota urens, Wodyetia bifurcata, Serenoa repens, Thrinax radiata, Roystonea regia, Colpothrinax wrightii, Sabal maritima, Sabal palmetto, Ptychosperma elegans and Livistona chinensis) is presented. The yields of oil extraction from the ripe whole-fruits, dried and milled, were between 0.6% and 25.5%. Such oils were semisolids or oleaginous liquids of different tonalities of brown, with characteristic odors, lightly aromatic. These oils showed free fatty acids contents between 1.2 and 70.2 %, and total fatty acids contents between 58.4 and 89.7 %, with palmitic (9.2 - 52.2 %) and oleic (9.6 - 42.7 %) as the main acids. In all the oils lauric (0.6 - 44.3 %), myristic (0.5 - 22.4%), stearic (1.7 - 6.1%), linoleic (3.5 - 28.5 %) and linolenic (0.1 - 3.4%) acids were also present; while palmitoleic (0.1-3.7 %), caproic (0-2.2 %), caprilic (0.1-2.8 %), capric (0.1-2.5 %), pentadecanoic (0.1- 0.5 %), heptadecanoic (0.2-0.7 %), uneicosanoic (0.1-0.2 %), eicosenoic (0.1-0.3 %) and docosaenoic (0.1-0.2 %) acids only appeared in some ones. The showed results could motivate the cultivation and better use of several of these natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]