Analysis On Nutritional Composition Of Salicornia And Studies On The The Physiological Functions Of Salicornia

In this paper, sea vegetable Salicornia cultivated in Nanao Island, Shantou, Guangdong Province, was studied for the first time。The main nutritional composition of the stem and seeds from Salicornia was analyzed, the extraction technology of polysaccharides from Salicornia stem was optimized, the polysaccharide was purified, and the purified polysaccharides were analysed preliminarily with FTIR, the function on in-vitro anti-oxidative, anti-obesity and reducing blood lipid were also investigated.Nutritional analysis showed that: the content of the crude protein, crude fat, crude fiber, total sugar, polysaccharides and ash from fresh Salicornia stem were 1.34, 0.28, 0.76, 1.28, 0.39, 3.42% respectively, the fresh stem was also rich in vitamin C,β-carotene, minerals and other nutrients, and was rich in eight essential amino acids and delicious amino acids, the content of Chlorophyll was up to 44.29mg/100g; the protein (34.01%) and oil (23.79%) contents from the seeds were rich, the protein was included kinds of amino acids, containing eight essential amino acids, the oil was rich in unsaturated fatty acids(UFA), especially in linoleic acid (70.62%), and was rich in vitamin E, the nutritional value was rather high.The content of cadmium, mercury, lead and arsenic of Salicornia stem were: 0.072, <0.01, 0.0279, 0.0099 (mg/kg) respectively, which were lower than national standards, complied with food hygiene requirements. Acute toxicity test results showed that: Salicornia stem (LD50>464g/kg) was one kind of nontoxic (LD50>10g/kg) vegetable, it is safe to eat.The optimum extraction conditions were obtained as ratio of water to material of 48:1, extraction time of 4.0h, extraction temperature of 90℃, under which the theoretically predicted yield of polysaccharides was 2.01%. Two single polysaccharides apex-â… and apex-â…¡were isolated and purified by DEAE-52 and Sephadex G-25 column chromatography, apex-â… were double-distilled water washed fractions, apex-â…¡were NaCl gradient washed fractions. By Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), apex-â… were speculated one kind of neutral polysaccharides withβ-D-glucopyranose andα-D-xylopyranosyl, apex-â…¡were speculated one kind of acidic polysaccharides contained sulfate andα-D-Galactosidase.The In-vitro anti-oxidative function of the extracts from Salicornia stem were showed that: the water extract, ethanol extract and water extracted polysaccharide had a certain reducing capacity and anti-oxidative effect, which were lower than the capacity of the control, vitamin C, the reducing power and the ability to Scavenging hydroxyl free radical (?OH) of the aqueous extract were stronger than the alcohol extract, but the aqueous extract did not show Scavenging superoxide anion free radical (O₂^-·) activity; The crude polysaccharides and purified polysaccharide also showed reducing capacity and the ability to Scavenging ?OH to some extent, while the activity of the crude polysaccharides was stronger than the purified polysaccharides, but both of them didn't show some scavenging O₂^-· activity.The result of the salicornia stem's anti-obesity function on the nutritive obses mice experiment showed that: Salicornia stem significantly inhibited the increase in obses mice body weight, reduced body fat mass, reduced fat cell size, had a good anti-obesity function. The stem juice, stem residue and the whole stem were used for anti-obesity and lipid-lowering experiments on obese rats, the results showed that: Compared with model group,the whole stem group had the best anti-obesity activity, could significantly inhibit body weight gain (p<0.01), lowering body mass index (BMI) (p<0.01), lowering body mass index (p<0.01) and decreased the fat cell volume; In addition, compared with the model group, the lipid-lowering effect of the whole stem was the best, it could significantly reduce the TG (p<0.05), TC (p<0.01) levels and increased HDL-C levels (p<0.01). These results indicated that Salicornia stem had a good anti-obesity and lipid-lowering effect, the whole stem could gat a best effect.