Biological and toxicological evaluation of edible Jatropha curcas L. oil

Abstract

Original ArticleJ. curcas has been known to be toxic for a long time, due to the presence of phorbol esters (Makkar et al., 1997), therefore, it is used to produce biofuels or for medicinal and pharmacological purposes, and as life fences by the local populations in many countries (Goel et al., 2007). Consumption of the seeds containing phorbol esters induces nausea, dizziness, and diarrhea; hence all J. curcas-derived products are not advisable for human or animal consumption. Phorbol esters are very resistant to heat, which restricts the use of all its products (Makkar et al., 1997).Notwithstanding, J. curcas varieties, identified as nontoxic exist in Mexico, these varieties do not have phorbol esters and, thus, are edible (Vandepitte et al., 2019). These seeds are found in the North of the state of Veracruz, Mexico, and have been widely used for a long time to prepare food for human consumption (Valdes-Rodriguez et al., 2013).Recently, oil of J. curcas seeds has gained interest as a source of renewable energy. The seeds have a high content of oil (43-59%) (Makkar et al., 1997;Martínez-Herrera et al., 2006;Colmenero & Bonilla, 2013) and can contain up to 60% of fatty acids like those of vegetal oils like soy, canola, sunflower, predominating unsaturated fatty acids, like oleic acid (34.3-45.8%) and linoleic acid (21.51-46.72%) (Colmenero & Bonilla, 2013). Additionally, the amino acids profile and the physicochemical characterization of the oil have been determined and compared with other vegetal sources, like soy, sesame, and sunflower (Carvalho et al., 2019;Kitts et al., 2019). The seed contains high quality oil and proteins (Makkar et al., 1997). Several studies have strengthened the potential of J. curcas to be used for human nutrition (Senger et al., 2017;Chino et al., 2019;García et al., 2020).Vegetal oils can be divided by categories, depending on their processing, in virgin or refined. During the refining process,