Ascertain of volatile oil in selective seed spices from diverse sources

Abstract

Seed spices such as cumin, fennel and coriander are high value and low volume case crop for farmers of arid and semi-arid region of Gujarat and Rajasthan. Spices have diverse nature of uses from culinary to medicine ingredient that are salubrious nature to human, even to animals. The spice content play a significant role for their quality evaluation and obtain value addition products. Volatile oil also knows as essential oil a major vital content and value added product from spices. To find out volatile oil content in different sources of seed spice have useful to procure for need base quality requirement. Presently an assessment of volatile oil in selected seed spices viz., cumin (Cuminum cyminum L.), fennel (Foenicum vulgare M.), and coriander (Coriandrum sativum L.) were conducted from collectively 923 samples collected from various sources during the two years 2011-12 and 2012-13 harvested crops. Results showed in table 1 are pooled average volatile oil (VO) content (v/w%) in seed spices that were found to be 4.10 ± 0.825%, 1.69 ± 0.525%, and 0.46 ± 0.125% from 326, 337, and 260 samples of cumin, fennel and coriander, respectively. In cumin and fennel seed from agronomic trials showed highest volatile oil 4.79% and 2.02%, whereas processed seed powder showed lowest volatile oil of 3.50% and 1.44%, respectively, in both crops. While in case of coriander, the VO value was 0.48% as highest in breeding trial samples, but at par with rest of collection from APMCs & FLD's, agronomic trials, and pooled average value at 0.46%. Crops of cumin and fennel seed from organic farming were significantly at par with agronomic trialed, whereas breeding- a varietal diverse cumin and fennel seed shows significant lower VO at 3.76% and 1.68% than rest collections of crops, respectively, in pooled value of both years. The volatile oil average values in cumin and fennel were 4.04%, 4.16% and 1.54%, 1.84% of their respective year of 2011-12 and 2012-13, which were within the significant limit but processed sample lead to decreases the content significantly from 4.10 ± 0.825% to 3.50 ± 0.59% which is net 17.14 percentage less than that of the pooled average value. It may infer from this assessment of volatile oil in cumin, fennel and coriander seeds that the good agricultural production practices as well as organic farming may increase in content against processed-cleaned.