Food Research International 33 (2000) 785791

www.elsevier.com/locate/foodres

Preliminary screening of antioxidant activity of some plant

extracts in rapeseed oil
.
.
D. Bandoniene, A. Pukalskas, P.R. Venskutonis *, D. Gruzdiene
.
Department of Food Technology, Kaunas University of Technology, Radvilencuc pl. 19, Kaunas, Lithuania, LT-3028
Received 12 May 1999; accepted 31 March 2000

Abstract
The antioxidant activity (AA) of acetone extracts of sage (Salvia ocinalis L.), sweet grass (Hierocloe odorata Wahlnb.), sea
buckthorn leaves (Hipophae rhamnodes L.), costmary (Balsamita major Desf., syn. Chrysanthemum balsamita L.), Roman camomile
(Anthemis nobilis L.), and tansy (Tanacetum vulgare L.) were tested in rened, bleached and deodorised rapeseed oil at 40 C. The
concentrations of the extracts added were in the range from 0.02 to 0.20% (w/w). The rate of oxidation was assessed by the measurement of peroxide value (PV) and calculation of such characteristics as induction period (IP), when PV reaches 20 meq kg1,
protection factor (PF), which is the ratio of IP of the sample with additive with IP of the sample without additive, and AA (the ratio
of IP increase of the sample with extract with the IP increase of the sample with butylated hydroxytoluene). Sage and sweet grass
extracts were found to be most eective in stabilising rapeseed oil, followed by tansy, Roman camomile, costmary and sea buckthorn in a decreasing order. The IP of rapeseed oil increased with extract concentration. AA's of the extracts added at dierent
concentrations were the following: sage, sweet grass (0.05, 0.1 and 0.2%) and tansy (0.2%) very high, (PF>3); tansy and Roman
camomile (0.1%) medium (PF=22.5), tansy (0.05%), Roman camomile (0.02 and 0.05%) and sea buckthorn (0.1 and 0.2%)
low (PF=1.52.0), tansy (0.02%) very low (PF=1.01.5). The extracts of sea buckthorn (0.02 and 0.05%) slightly increased the
formation of peroxides in rapeseed oil as compared with pure oil. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Sage (Salvia ocinalis); Sweet grass (Hierochloe odorata); Sea buckthorn (Hipophae rhamnodes); Costmary (Balsamita major); Roman
camomile (Anthemis nobilis); Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare); Extracts; Antioxidant activity; Rapeseed oil

1. Introduction
Governmental medical authorities and consumers are
concerned about the safety of their food and about the
potential eect of synthetic additives on their health.
During the last few decades an intensive testing of the
safety of synthetic food additives has been carried out
and many of them have been found to possess some
toxic activity (Reische, Lillard & Eitenmiller, 1998). As
a result, search of natural substitutes which in most
cases are considered as GRAS (generally recognised as
safe) substances has increased considerably.
Such a tendency can also be applied to synthetic
antioxidants, such as butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT),
butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), etc. The number of
reports about isolation and testing of natural, mainly of
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +370-7-756426; fax: +370-7-456647.
E-mail address: rimas.venskutonis@ctf.ktu.lt (P.R. Venskutonis).

plant origin, antioxidants has increased during the last

decade immensely. These attempts have led to the
development of very eective natural antioxidants from
rosemary (Rosmarinus ocinalis) and sage (Salvia ocinalis), which are now available commercially (Cuvelier,
Berset & Richard, 1990; Djarmati, Jankov, Schwirtlich,
Djulinac & Djordjevic, 1991; Pokorny, Nquyen &
Korczak, 1997).
A great number of dierent spices and aromatic herbs
have been tested for their antioxidant activity, however,
there are still many plants, which were not examined on
this matter or the knowledge about their antioxidative
properties are very scanty. Sweet grass (Hierochloe
odorata), sea buckthorn leaves (Hipophae rhamnodes),
costmary (Balsamita major), Roman camomile (Anthemis
nobilis), and tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) are among such
plants. These plants were investigated from some other
points of view, mostly regarding their medicinal properties,
essential oil and avonoid composition.

0963-9969/00/$ - see front matter # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0963-9969(00)00084-3

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.
D. Bandoniene et al. / Food Research International 33 (2000) 785791

Ueyama, Arai and Hashimoto (1991) reported that

volatile oil from Hierochloe odorata was rich in coumarin.
Quantitative analysis by HPLC showed that ethanol
extracts of the roots contain 3.57% (w/w) of coumarin
and that of the aerial parts 3.72% (w/w).
Tansy is well known as an antiseptic and a spasmolytic plant against insects in cattles and for protecting hair
against dandru. Ognyanov and Todorova (1983) isolated the avonoids jaceidin and jaceosidin in owering
parts of T. vulgare. The essential oil of T. vulgare was
also investigated and its main components identied
(Hethelyi et al., 1981). Smith and Burford (1994) used
supercritical uid extraction with CO2 to extract the
essential oils from the tansy, examined the extracts
obtained by capillary GC and GC/MS and identied the
major components (thujone, camphor and an unknown
compound with MW=350).
Fanconnier, Jaziri, Homies, Shimomura and Marlier
(1996) found that owering parts of Roman camomile
were rich in essential oils, avonoids, particularly quercetin, phenolic acids and other compounds.
Several studies (Bestmann et al.,1987; Tamas, Sincraian & Rusu, 1989; Venskutonis & Dapkevicius, 1995)
reported the essential oil from leaves of Chrysanthemum
balsamita L. (syn. Balsamita major Desf.). About 30
components have been identied. The oil possessed
insecticide properties against aphids.
Eliseev and Karovina (1977) found that the polyphenol content in the leaves, shoot bark seeds, fruits
and reproductive buds of Hippophae rhamnodes was in
the range of 14.0715.68, 6.728.84, 5.927.88, 0.03
0.06 and 4.265.83%, respectively. The polyphenol
content in the reproductive buds in early spring and in
the autumn was slightly greater in male buds due to
their large size. Mukhamed-Yarova and Chumbalov
(1979) isolated from the leave extracts of Hippophae
rhamnodes quercetin, isorhamnetin, myricetin, 3-O-b-dglucopyranoside of isorhamnetin and isoquercetin.
The unique composition of fatty acids of rapeseed oil
dierentiates it from other vegetable oils. Rapeseed oil
has a substantial amount (812%) of linolenic acid
(C18:3) compared to other vegetable oils, such as soybean, sunower, olive and corn, which contain
approximately 8.0, 0.2, 0.8 and 0.7% of linolenic acid,
respectively (Economou, Oreopoulous & Thomopoulos,
1991). The high content of unsaturated fatty acids (on
average 38%) in rapeseed oil inuences its stability.
McMullen, Hawrysh, Lin and Tokarska (1991) investigated the eect of synthetic antioxidants (BHA/BHT
and ascorbyl palmitate) in improving the oxidative stability of rapeseed oil, however, their research showed
that only ascorbyl palmitate retarded auto-oxidation in
stored canola oil, while BHA/BHT did not improve oil
stability.
The present study was undertaken to perform the
preliminary screening of antioxidant properties of some

grown in Lithuanian plants, namely sweet grass, costmary,

Roman camomile, sea buckthorn and tansy. To our
knowledge there are no reports about antioxidant
properties of these plants in the available literature. For
this purpose acetone extracts obtained from these plants
were added to the rapeseed oil and oxidative deterioration (formation of peroxides) of it was measured at
timed periods during storage in an oven at 40 C. BHT
and sage extracts as well established strong natural
antioxidants were used for comparison reasons.
A large number of solvents and procedures have been
used for the isolation of natural antioxidative substances, including polar compounds such as ethanol
(Cuvelier, Richard & Berset, 1996; Yanishlieva, Marinova, Marekov & Gordon, 1997), methanol (Economou et al., 1991) and non-polar ones, mainly hexane
(Economou et al.; Schwarz & Ernst, 1996). Cuvelier et
al. (1996) investigated 32 pilot-plant and commercial
extracts from rosemary and sage isolated with hexane,
CO2, ethanol and found signicant dierences between
antioxidant activities of the extracts obtained even by
the same solvent. The authors concluded that these differences could depend on synergism and antagonism
between extracted phenolic acids, diterpenoids and avones, present together in the extracts. Economou et al.
concluded that acetone was the most ecient solvent
for the extraction of the antioxidative materials from
sage and rosemary. In some other reports acetone was
also proved to be an ecient solvent for the extraction
of antioxidative substances from sage, rosemary and
some other herbs (Chen, Shi & Ho, 1992; Dapkevicius,
Venskutonis, van Beek & Linssen, 1998; Pokorny et al.,
1997). In general the use of dierent polarity substances
can provide more exhaustive information on the properties of the extracts, however in this study acetone
was selected as a medium polarity solvent, which was
proved to be eective in antioxidant research in several
studies.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Materials
The following reagents were used: synthetic antioxidant 2,6-di-tert-butyl-4-methylphenol (BHT) (AldrichChemie, D-7924 Steinheim), acetone (pure, OBR PR,
Plock, Poland), ethanol (rectied spirit 95%, Polmos,
Poland), chloroform (pharm., Lachema, Czech Republic),
acetic acid (98%, pure, Lachema, Czech Republic),
potassium iodide (G. R., Lachema, Czech Republic),
Standard Folin-Ciocalteu Phenol reagent 2.0 M (SigmaAldrich Chemie GmbH D-82041, Deisenhofen, Germany), sodium carbonate (anhydrous, Sigma, Germany),
sodium thiosulfate (Sigma, Germany), gallic acid (3,4,5trihydroxybenzoic acid (Sigma, Germany).

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D. Bandoniene et al. / Food Research International 33 (2000) 785791

Roman camomile, tansy, sweet grass, costmary and

sea-buckthorn were obtained from Kaunas Botanical
Garden. Sage was obtained from the collection of aromatic
plants of Lithuanian Institute of Horticulture in 1997.
All herbs were harvested during full owering period.
Stems and woody parts were separated and only owering parts and/or leaves were used for further analysis
after drying.
The Joint Stock Company ``Obeliu Aliejus'', Lithuania, donated fresh, fully rened, deodorised rapeseed
oil, containing no synthetic antioxidants. The fresh
rapeseed oil was of a good initial quality. The iodine
value of oil was 115 g J2 100 g1 , a peroxide value
0.75 meq kg1, p-anisidine value 3.0, erucic acid (C
22:1) content 0.5%, linolenic acid content 9.8%
and natural tocopherols content 767 mg kg1, consisting of 228 mg kg1 of a-tocopherol and 539 mg kg1
of b+g-tocopherols (determined by HPLC).
2.2. Methods
2.2.1. Preparation of plant extracts
The plants (leaves of the sage, sea buckthorn and
costmary, owering parts of Roman camomile and
tansy and aerial parts of sweet grass) were dried at
302 C in a ventilated oven ``Vasara'' (Utena, Lithuania).
Dried parts of the plants were ground (max particle size
0.32 mm) and 15 g of comminuted material extracted
with 900 ml of acetone (pure, Poland) in a Soxhlet
apparatus during 6 h. Solvent was evaporated in a R114
rotavapour by using a B480 water bath (60 C) and a
B169 vacuum pump (Buchi, Switzerland). The extracts
were nally dried in a SPT 200 vacuum drier (Horyzont,
Poland) at 252 C and 0.08 MPa. Dry extracts were
stored in a freezer below 18 C until use. The yields of
the plant extracts were as follows: sage (SE) 14.84%,
sea buckthorn (SBE) 14.95%, costmary (CE)
21.13%, Roman camomile (RCE) 13%, sweet grass
(SGE) 9.35%, tansy (TE) 14.11%.
2.2.2. Determination of total phenolic compounds
Phenolic compounds were extracted from 0.5 g of
grounded raw material with 3 portions (30 ml each) of
80% ethanol on a heating stove (LTHS-1000, Druteva
Brnenska, Czech Republic) at 50 C for 1 h. After each
extraction the extract was ltered into a 100 ml measuring ask and nally diluted with ethanol up to the
mark. Total amount of phenolic compounds was measured in the extract with a standard Folin-Ciocalteu
reagent (Cuvelier et al., 1996) which was diluted with
distilled water (1:10) and added (4 ml) to 1 ml of ethanolic plant extract. The colour was developed by adding
5 ml of 7.5% sodium carbonate solution in distilled
water. The absorbance was read at 765 nm after 30 min
on an UV-vis spectrophotometer (Specord M40, Carl
Zeiss Jena, Germany). Gallic acid was used as a stan-

787

dard substance for the calibration curve. The total

amount of phenolic compounds was calculated by the
following formulae and expressed in mg g1 on a dry
weight of herbs in gallic acid equivalent (GAE):
C

c
V
;
m

where: C concentration of the total phenolics,

mg g1, in GAE;
c concentration of gallic acid, mg ml1;
V volume of plant extracts, 100 ml;
m weight of plants materials, g.
Three replicates were analysed for every sample.
2.2.3. Introduction of extracts into the oil. Calculated
amounts of the extracts (varied from 0.0 to 0.2% of the
oil weight) were mixed with 4 ml of absolute ethanol
and added to the 25 g of rapeseed oil. According to our
experiments it was the optimal and the lowest amount
of alcohol needed for the uniform distribution of the
extracts in oil. The additive was mixed into the oil with
a magnetic stirrer during 10 min at 50 C. Synthetic
antioxidant BHT and such well tested natural antioxidant as sage acetone extract (SE) were used as reference substances for comparative purposes. Sage extracts
were prepared in the same way as all other plant
extracts used in the present study. Ethanol was removed
from the oil in a vacuum oven during 12 h at 35 C.
2.2.4. Methods of assessment of oil oxidation and
stability
The oil samples (25 g each) were placed in open 150
ml volume beakers. The oxidative deterioration of
samples was studied by Shaal oven test as described by
Economou et al. (1991). The experiments were repeated
twice. When the dierences between the replicates were
more signicant the measurements were repeated, however, such cases were exceptionally rare. Standard
deviation in all cases was in the range of 310% from
the mean. A blank sample was prepared under the same
conditions, without adding any additives. The rate of
auto-oxidation of rapeseed oil was estimated according
to the increase of its peroxide value (PV) which was
determined by the method Cd 8-53 of the American Oil
Chemist's Society (Wolker, 1986).
The changes of the induction period (IP) of oil after
the addition of each plant extract, as a function of its
concentration in oil was determined. The IP was considered as the number of hours needed for the PV of the
sample to reach the value of 20 meq kg1 (Wanasundara & Shahidi, 1994). Protection factor (PF) values
of rapeseed oil and antioxidant activities (AA) of the
extracts were calculated by the following formulas:

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D. Bandoniene et al. / Food Research International 33 (2000) 785791

788

PF

IPX
;
IPK

AA

IPX IPK
IPBHT IPK

where: IPX

induction period of the sample with

additive, h;
IPK induction period of sample without
additive, h;
IPBHT induction period of sample with added
synthetic antioxidant BHT, h.

The following scale is proposed for the protection

factor (PF) values: 1.01.5 (very low), 1.52.0 (low),
2.02.5 (medium), 2.53.0 (high), >3.0 (very high)
(Ahmad, Hakim & Shehata, 1983). Actually, PF is
dened as a stability value with additive divided by that
of the blank sample.
3. Results and discussion
The amount of total phenolics in the herbs is presented in Table 1. The extract of sage possessed approximately two times higher amounts of phenolics (47.67
GAE) than the other plant extracts except sea buckthorn
leaves (32.10 GAE).
The data for rapeseed oil autoxidation, measured as a
changes of PV, at 40 C after addition of extracts of
sage, sweet grass, sea buckthorn, costmary, Roman
camomile, and tansy are presented in Table 2. The concentrations of the extracts in oil, calculated on a dry
weight basis, varied from 0.00 to 0.20% (w/w). It is
evident that all extracts in general showed some oil stabilising eect, which increased with their concentrations
in the oil.
The extracts obtained from sage and sweet grass were
found to be the most eective natural antioxidants. The
eect of sage (0.02%) and sweet grass (0.02%) extracts
on the stability of rapeseed oil during accelerated oxidation storage conditions was comparable with the

Table 1
The amount of total phenolic compounds, in mg g1 of herbs on a dry
weight basis, expressed as gallic acid equivalents (GAE)
Plant

Total phenolic compounds

Sage
Sea buckthorn
Roman camomile
Sweet grass
Tansy
Costmary

47.670.69
32.100.32
24.830.45
22.000.21
18.600.58
22.000.49

eect of butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) at the same

concentration. This nding lends further support to
previous reports that sage contains strong antioxidative
substances, however, the most important nding of this
study was the strong activity of sweet grass extract
which was according to our knowledge revealed for the
rst time. For instance, PV of rapeseed oil with 0.10 and
0.20% of SGE after 70 days of storage was approximately 20 meq kg1, whereas in blank samples it
increased to 793.72 meq kg1, in the samples with the
extracts from other herbs to 350926 meq kg1. Having
in mind that BHT is a pure compound while the extracts
are complex mixtures containing ineective substances
in terms of their antioxidative activity or even some
amount of pro-oxidant compounds it could be supposed
that sweet grass contains very strong constituents
retarding lipid peroxidation. Several strong antioxidant
compounds have been identied in such plants as sage
and rosemary, whereas the structures of these constituents in sweet grass are the target for further investigations.
The additives of Roman camomile, 0.05 and 0.1%,
and tansy, 0.05% , had the eect, which was almost
similar to the eect of a smaller amount of BHT
(0.0075%). When the concentration of sage extract was
increased up to 0.1% and that of sweet grass up to 0.05,
0.1 and 0.2% the antioxidant eect in rapeseed oil at
40 C was very high. It is interesting to note that the
activity of sweet grass at 0.1% concentration was
approximately 1.3 times higher in comparison with the
eect of such well-established natural antioxidant as
sage extract at the same concentration.
The relative antioxidant eciencies of sage, sweet
grass, sea buckthorn, costmary, Roman camomile and
tansy are compared in Fig. 1 where an IP of rapeseed oil
after the addition of each plant extract, as a function of
the concentration of plant extract in oil is presented.
Experimental data showed that the rate of autoxidation
in most samples increased very slowly after PV reached
20 meq kg1.
Data provided in Fig. 1 also show that sage and sweet
grass extracts are much more eective in stabilising
rapeseed oil than other extracts used in this experiment.
The eectiveness of the other plant extracts decreased
following this order: tansy>Roman camomile>sea
buckthorn>costmary at a concentration 0.1%.
It is evident from Fig. 1 that sweet grass extracts at
0.05 and 0.1% concentrations were more ecient than
sage extracts and at 0.02% sweet grass extract was more
ecient than BHT at the same concentration, but
slightly less eective than sage.
PF's and AA's of the extracts are presented in Table 3.
The eectiveness of antioxidants was compared according
to their stability values and protection factors. The eectiveness of antioxidants under the conditions used is
ranged in the following descending order: sweet grass

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D. Bandoniene et al. / Food Research International 33 (2000) 785791

789

Table 2
Eect of various extracts on the formation of peroxides in rapeseed oil at 40 C
Additivea

Blank
BHT
BHT
SE
SE
SE
SBE
SBE
SBE
SBE
CE
CE
CE
CE
RCE
RCE
RCE
RCE
SGE
SGE
SGE
SGE
TE
TE
TE
TE

Concentration (%)

0.0075
0.02
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.20
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.20
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.20
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.20
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.20

Peroxide values (meq kg1) after dierent storage time (days) (n=23)
0

14

21

28

35

49

63

70

0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74
0.74

7.72
4.80
3.86
9.28
4.35
5.73
11.70
14.01
8.89
11.52
8.52
4.46
6.51
8.95
3.20
4.53
5.24
6.11
7.31
4.90
4.73
5.09
5.24
4.95
5.60
6.09

22.04
12.13
9.45
9.40
10.24
7.99
22.75
23.12
10.68
10.83
21.50
12.50
14.20
13.36
8.40
5.21
5.75
5.76
6.56
6.86
5.60
7.88
12.93
6.22
5.40
9.40

42.34
23.22
11.86
14.91
11.20
9.02
51.97
48.80
27.39
24.86
46.98
29.07
28.77
25.62
25.74
22.04
21.13
18.60
14.83
10.41
10.29
13.99
34.20
24.70
16.32
12.94

72.95
34.40
20.90
24.00
10.25
10.03
79.39
73.97
48.34
43.00
73.30
47.78
43.98
45.98
44.33
38.46
33.20
35.62
22.23
12.79
9.48
7.35
56.66
44.79
28.01
16.81

96.99
62.10
28.96
39.61
12.30
11.13
100.56
105.82
77.96
76.27
100.67
83.58
80.44
75.63
76.72
67.18
62.98
61.37
43.83
10.86
8.04
7.29
87.43
73.71
52.84
39.13

120.75
79.14
36.84
63.83
14.95
12.92
131.05
124.25
92.59
100.88
118.32
116.95
106.35
101.42
93.41
89.95
85.14
82.68
63.63
12.70
7.91
8.24
102.63
93.19
79.08
63.55

232.11
133.67
65.94
125.48
27.56
20.10
196.08
227.35
145.91
87.32
229.09
171.69
166.43
151.32
160.39
137.00
140.61
136.43
117.3
23.41
16.51
16.80
184.84
158.49
132.93
115.43

818.94
221.92
98.52
210.01
63.79
29.43
692.70
705.88
428.97
313.23
636.81
427.28
384.57
342.82
585.64
471.09
381.91
270.93
207.99
34.850
19.90
16.14
499.67
558.65
309.00
177.20

793.72
438.48
125.04
434.36
96.54
44.98
926.31
882.05
855.30
705.43
742.71
729.54
700.36
658.31
918.07
854.18
807.47
673.98
222.10
57.66
22.10
19.30
798.78
819.79
607.62
349.20

a
BHT, butylated hydroxytoluene; SE, sage extract; SBE, sea buckthorn extract; CE, costmary extract; RCE, Roman camomile extract; SGE,
sweet grass extract; TE, tansy extract.

Fig. 1. Changes of the induction period (IP) of rapeseed oil after the
addition various plant extracts and BHT at concentrations varying
from 0.0 to 0.2%.

0.2%>sweet grass 0.1%>sage 0.1%>sweet grass

0.05%>sage 0.05%>tansy 0.2%>BHT 0.02%>sweet
grass 0.02%>sage 0.02%>tansy 0.1%>sea buckthorn
0.2%>Roman camomile 0.2%>Roman camomile
0.1%>tansy 0.05%, Roman camomile 0.05%, BHT
0.0075%>sea buckthorn 0.1%, costmary 0.2%>
costmary 0.1%>costmary 0.05%, Roman camomile
0.02%>tansy 0.02%>blank sample.

Sage extracts at 0.05 and 0.1% concentrations, sweet

grass extracts at 0.05, 0.1 and 0.2%, tansy at 0.2%
concentrations exhibited a ``very high'' antioxidant
activity (PF>3), sweet grass extracts at 0.02%, sage
0.02% and BHT 0.02 ``high'' (PF of 2.53), tansy
0.1%, Roman camomile 0.1% and sea buckthorn
0.2% ``medium'' (PF of 2.02.5), tansy 0.05%,
Roman camomile 0.02 and 0,05%, costmary 0.05, 0.1
and 0.2% and sea buckthorn 0.1% exibited ``low'' antioxidant activity (PF of 1.52) and tansy at 0.02 ``very
low'' (PF of 11.5). Costmary at 0.02%, sea buckthorn
at 0.02 and 0.05% concentration showed prooxidation
eect in comparison with control. It should also be said
that clear correlation between total phenolics and AA
was not revealed, except for sage, which contained the
highest amount of phenolics and its extracts showed
very good AA. However, the content of phenolics in
sweet grass, which gave very strong antioxidative
extract was almost equal to the content of these compounds in other tested herbs. It is known that the AA of
various phenolic compounds can dier signicantly,
therefore the content of total phenolics in herbs is not
very informative indicator of their possible AA. The
structures of isolated constituents need to be elucidated
and assessed in order to obtain more precise results.

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D. Bandoniene et al. / Food Research International 33 (2000) 785791

790

Table 3
Antioxidant activity of investigated plant extracts and their eect on
the stability of rapeseed oil
Additive

Concentration
%

Protection
factor (PF)a

Antioxidant
activity (AA)b

Without additive
BHT
BHT
Sage
Sage
Sage
Sea buckthorn
Sea buckthorn
Sea buckthorn
Sea buckthorn
Costmary
Costmary
Costmary
Costmary
Roman camomile
Roman camomile
Roman camomile
Roman camomile
Sweet grass
Sweet grass
Sweet grass
Sweet grass
Tansy
Tansy
Tansy
Tansy

0.00
0.0075
0.02
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.20
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.20
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.20
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.20
0.02
0.05
0.10
0.20

1.00
1.82
2.97
2.65
6.17
7.42
0.91
0.83
1.66
2.27
0.98
1.59
1.61
1.66
1.59
1.82
1.97
2.20
2.85
6.69
9.54
10.76
1.44
1.82
2.42
3.41

1.00
0.84
2.62
3.26
0.05
0.09
0.34
0.65
0.00
0.30
0.31
0.34
0.30
0.42
0.49
0.61
0.94
2.89
4.34
4.95
0.22
0.42
0.72
1.22

PF is the ratio of IP of the sample with additive with IP of the

sample without additive.
b
AA was calculated in comparison with BHT at the concentration
0.02%.

4. Conclusion
The results of this study suggest that sweet grass
acetone oleoresin (AO) at 0.05, 0.1 and 0.2%, sage AO
at 0.05 and 0.1% and tansy AO at 0.2% concentrations
were more ecient than BHT at 0.02% concentration in
rapeseed oil at 40 C.
According to these studies optimum concentration of
AO could be chosen in rapeseed oil as follows: sweet
grass and sage 0.05%, tansy 0.2%, costmary, sea
buckthorn and Roman camomile concentrations must
be higher than those used in this study.
Strong antioxidant activity of sweet grass extracts has
been reported for the rst time, which gives a strong
impact for expanding the investigations of constituents
responsible for the protection of oil against oxidation.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by EC project IC 15 -CT
96-1006 (GG 12-MUYS). The authors also wish to

thank Lithuanian Institute of Horticulture and Kaunas

Botanical Garden for supplying plants for testing.

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