Vitis vinifera cv Uvalino, a neglected grape vine as a source of nutraceutical lipids

Vitis vinifera cv. uvalino is an old native grape vine from Piedmont which has been recently rediscovered for the production of wine. Chemical studies have shown that the cultivar has the highest content of resveratrol (Borsa D. et al 2003) which is consistent with the high antioxidant activity displayed in in vitro experiments (Bertelli A. et al 2004). As a continuation of the chemical study on Vitis vinifera cv. uvalino we aimed to characterize the composition of the oil from its seeds. Grape seeds are considered to be a left-over product from the wine making process whose utilization is however of economic relevance for waste reduction. Grape seed oil, “olio di vinaccioli”, is a high-quality edible oil with beneficial health properties mainly due to its content of unsaturated fatty acids. In our study, chemical profiling of the seed oil from V. vinifera cv uvalino has been obtained by a combination of spectrometric and spectroscopic techniques such as GC, GC-MS, NMR and ESI-MS/MS. Uvalino’s grape seed oil was found to consist of triacylglycerols (TAG) as in the case of seed oils from other grape cultivars (Bail S. et al 2008). Analysis of TAG fatty acid composition indicated that the two unsaturated linoleic acid (72.87 %) and oleic acid (13.20%) are dominant, whereas palmitic acid (9.59%) is the most abundant saturated fatty acid. Moreover, ESI-MS/MS allowed to disclose the most abundant TAG species which include components at m/z 901 (OLO), 898 (LLL) and 877 (LSP). In addition to the above, an analytical method based on HPLC-ELSD detection has been developed for identification of TAG species in grape seed oils and it will be presented here.