Influence of seed pre-soaking and oil body washing regime on the physical quality of the final suspension

Abstract

Obtaining small intact organelles is crucial to avoid artefacts in oil body suspension or emulsion. This work was undertaken to recover high quality of oil bodies from sunflower seeds. Organelle integrity could be lost if high forces are imposed on the tissue/material during their recovery. Pre-soaking before wet milling and multiple washing with alkaline buffer was performed to isolate a high quality oil bodies suspension. It was evident from different physical measurements like particle size, zeta-potential and light microscopy that pre-soaking had a significant influence on the oil body suspensions with no significant sign of aggregation or coalescence. It was also observed that the resultant washed oil body suspensions are highly surface charge indicating very stable suspension phase behaviour. The physical state of the seed during wet milling has a significant impact on the quality of the oil body suspension.