Background & Aim: Echium amoenum is most commonly used herb after tea with high nutritional values. The purpose of this research was to produce Echium amoenum herbal tea, enriched by Malva and Althaea rosea var. nigra, in order to enhance the sensory properties and antioxidant activity of herbal tea. Experimental: In th...

Metabolic profiling allows for simultaneous and rapid annotation of biochemically similar organismal metabolites. An effective platform for profiling of toxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) and their N-oxides (PANOs) was developed using ultra high pressure liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight (UHPLC-QTOF) mass spectrometry. Field-collected populations of invasive Australian weeds, Ech...

Enzymatic glycerolysis of Echium oil (Echium plantagineum) has been carried out in the presence of four commercial lipases. Different pretreatments of the reaction mixture, such as high pressure homogenization and addition of food grade monoolein as an emulsifier, were evaluated to test their influence on the glycerolysis reaction. In addition, the impact of reducing temperature and the utiliza...

A total of 3917 honey samples and 119 'bee pollen' samples (pollen collected by honeybees) were analysed for pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs). Some 0.05 M sulphuric acid was used for extraction followed by a clean-up step by means of solid-phase extraction. Separation and detection was achieved by target analysis using an LC-MS/MS system. PAs were found in 66% of the raw honeys (bulk honey not yet...

Honey samples (n = 126) from Castilla-La Mancha (Central Spain) were characterized based on their physicochemical properties and a melissopalynological analysis. The latter showed that Echium pollen type was the dominant palynomorph in most samples, representing at least 30% of the pollen in each sample. As anticipated, a relationship was observed between the proportion of this pollen and the p...

Background & Aim: Echium amoenum is most commonly used herb after tea with high nutritional values. The purpose of this research was to produce Echium amoenum herbal tea, enriched by Malva and Althaea rosea var. nigra, in order to enhance the sensory properties and antioxidant activity of herbal tea. Experimental: In th...

Various plant seeds have received little attention in fatty acid research. Seeds from 30 species mainly of Boraginaceae and Primulaceae were analysed in order to identify potential new sources of the n-3 PUFA α-linolenic acid (ALA) and stearidonic acid (SDA) and of the n-6 PUFA γ-linolenic acid (GLA). The fatty acid distribution differed enormously between genera of the same family. Echium spec...