Occurrence of Conjugated Linolenic Acid in Flesh and Seed of Bitter Gourd

It is known that seed lipid from bitter gourd (Momordic charantia) contains more than 50% 9cis(c), 11trans(t), 13t-18:3 as conjugated linolenic acids (CLN). This study showed that a small but distinct amount of CLN was also found in flesh of bitter gourd, indicating the possibility of CLN intake through eating bitter gourd. The CLN isomer of lipid from bitter gourd flesh was not 9c, 11t, 13t-18:3, but 9t, 11t, 13c-18:3. A high performance liquid chromatographic method was also described for the separation of CLN isomers. The simultaneous detection and identification of the separated geometrical CLN isomers on a C18 or C30 reversed-phase column was accomplished by photodiode array detection.