Skip to main content
ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #39284
Title: SEED SURFACE GUMS CONTENT USING THE DUBOIS CARBOHYDRATE ANALYSIS

Author
item ABBOTT THOMAS P - 3620-85-00
item NELSON TERRY C - 3601-00-00
item Kleiman, Robert

Submitted to: Journal Of Industrial Crops And Products
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/25/1995
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: A new crop, lesquerella, is getting a lot of industrial attention, not only because it has a valuable oil, but also because it contains a thickening ingredient that could be useful in oil drilling muds, cosmetics and a number of other applications. There was no convenient way to test the seeds of this new crop for the thickeners, so in this paper we developed a new method to help breeders evaluate seed and processors to test how well they were separating these thickeners.

Technical Abstract: The DuBois carbohydrate method was modified for the quantitation of seed surface gums. This method converted seed surface carbohydrate values to lesquerella gums content with a correction for low molecular weight species. Between 20 and 30 seed samples could be tested in triplicate in a normal 8 h day. The data are reproducible with a least significant difference between gum content of 1.03. Germination rates of seeds are uneffected by the gums determination. Of 16 lesquerella species tested, L. fendleri had the highest amount of high molecular weight gums. Lesquerella species had seed surface gums from 4.5 to 17.0%. Lesquerella fendleri seed presscake (27.8% gums), hexane- defatted meal (35.6% gums) and gums of other genera were also amenable to the test method.