ABSTRACT

In addition to standing out in the Amazonian landscape, Arecaceae species, popularly known as palm trees, add economic and social values. The purpose of this paper was to analyze the physical and chemical characteristics of the oils extracted from five varieties of peach palm fruits (Bactris gasipaes). In order to achieve such purpose, fruit samples from five plantation matrices were collected in the municipality of Cruzeiro do Sul, in the upper Juruá region (74º0 ‘W at 72ºW and 7º05’ S at 9º40 ‘S). We determined the oil content, the density, the refractive index, the spectrophotometry, and the thin layer chromatography. The data were subjected to analyses of variance (ANOVA) and regression. The difference between the means of the treatment was tested with the Tukey test at 5% significance, performed with the aid of RStudio Core Team software, version 3.6.3 and with ExpDes.pt package, car, stats and fBasics. Our findings showed essential oil contents of 24.29%, 24.28% for matrices 2 and 4, and below 8.1% for matrices 1.3 and 5. The acidity index ranged from 1.26 to 5.22 mg NaOH / g oil, whereas the refractive index ranged from 1.4510 to 1.4690. The analysis of layer chromatography resulted in seven RFs, with the ranges 0.325; 0.45; 0.5; 0.6; 0.7; 0.8 and 1 for all oils analyzed. Spectroscopic curves showed significant differences in the ranges 320 to 540 nm, indicating different functional groups and/or substances in the extractives. According to the results, the essential oil from the samples of peach palm fruits (Bactris gasipaes) showed distinct and significant values for the five physical and chemical parameters evaluated, which calls attention to a possible occurrence of genetic variability in the material studied. The findings suggest that the investigation should be expanded with a larger sample size, and that an alternative investment in genetic improvement should be confirmed.

Keywords:
Amazon; Alto Juruá; Palm; Genetic variability