Evaluation of edible oils for Argemone mexicana seed oil adulteration.

Adulteration is important factor which may affect quality of food articles. Adulteration may be defined as substitution of genuine raw material with inferior or toxic materials. In number of cases, adulteration of Argemone mexicana (Family: Papaveraceae) seed oil in edible oils has been reported as cause of epidemic dropsy. Sanguinarine and dihydrosanguinarine are toxic principles (alkaloids) present in Argemone oil. Under present studies attempts have been made to evaluate Argemone oil adulteration in different edible oils. Adulterated and unadulterated edible oil samples were evaluated for primary quality control parameters and further subjected for instrumental analysis like FT-IR, GC-MS and HPTLC. Fatty acids present in edible oils are complex in nature and common in most of the oils, which causes interference in spectral analysis. In HPTLC analysis (hexane: acetone: methanol; 80:15:5), sanguinarine (Rf: 0.18) and dihydrosanguinarine (Rf: 0.33) were used as marker. HPTLC method was found to be well suited for separation of toxic principles like sanguinarine and dihydrosanguinarine in comparatively small proportion, present in adulterated samples.