ORIGINAL PAPER Oil Content and Fatty Acid Composition in Seeds of Three Safflower Species Mohammad R. Sabzalian Æ Ghodratollah Saeidi Æ Aghafakhr Mirlohi Received: 16 March 2008 / Accepted: 15 May 2008 / Published online: 3 June 2008 Ó AOCS 2008 Abstract Seeds of six safflower (C. tinctorius L.) geno- types and 19 accessions of two wild species were analyzed for oil and fatty acid composition. Oil content ranged from 29.20 to 34.00, 20.04 to 30.80 and 15.30 to 20.80% in C. tinctorius, C. oxyacantha Bieb. and C. lanatus L., respectively. The main fatty acids of oleic, linoleic, pal- mitic and stearic acids composed 96–99% of the total fatty acids in all species. The sum of myristic, palmitoleic, arachidic, and behenic fatty acids in oil of the species ranged from 0.43 to 0.57%. The oleic acid in seed oil of C. tinctorius, C. oxyacantha and C. lanatus ranged from 12.24 to 15.43, 14.11 to 19.28 and 16.70 to 19.77%, respectively. The corresponding ranges for linoleic acid were 71.05 to 76.12, 63.90 to 75.43 and 62.47 to 71.08%. Palmitic acid in seed oil varied from 5.48 to 7.59% in C. tinctorius, 6.09 to 8.33% in C. oxyacantha and 7.44 to 8.78% in C. lanatus. The stearic acid of the seed oil showed a variation of 1.72 to 2.86, 2.50 to 4.87 and 3.14 to 4.79% in genotypes of these species, respectively. The fatty acids composition of oil among the cultivated and wild species were not considerably different, indicating that seed oil of the wild safflower is possibly suitable for human consumption and industrial purposes. Keywords Safflower Á Wild safflower Á Seed oil Á Fatty acid Introduction Oilseeds are important sources of vegetable oils. The suitability of a vegetable oil for a particular use such as nutritional, industrial or pharmaceutical is determined by its fatty acid composition which is highly variable depending on the plant species. This has encouraged researchers to look for new sources of oil or new fatty acid compositions in different plant species. Genetic variation for fatty acid composition is essential for genetic improvement of the oil quality and developing new culti- vars [1, 2]. A large number of potential plants have been analyzed for oil content and fatty acid profiles and some have been identified and are cultivated as the new oil seed crops [3]. For nutritional purposes, genetic improvement of already established oil crops has resulted in new genotypes with improved oil quality such as the low erucic acid oil cultivars of Brassica species [4] or new flax cultivars with low linolenic acid in the oil [5, 6]. The genus Carthamus from the Compositae family comprises 16 recognized species [7]. C. tinctorius is the only cultivated species of this genus, but the others are either wild or weeds. Carthamus oxyacantha as one of the wild species is widespread in Turkey, subtropical regions of western Iraq, Iran, northwest India, throughout Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan [8]. This spe- cies is important because it is assumed to be the ancient male parent of cultivated safflower [9] and these two spe- cies have been successfully crossed with each other [10]. Nevertheless, it seems that C. palestinus Eig. species has the most likely affinity to cultivated safflower [11]. The C. lanatus, a winter growing annual plant is the other species with the second highest distribution in Iran after C. oxyacantha [12]. Crosses between C. lanatus L. (n = 22) and cultivated safflower (n = 12) have not M. R. Sabzalian Á G. Saeidi (&) Á A. Mirlohi Department of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, 84156-83111 Isfahan, Iran e-mail: gsaeidi@cc.iut.ac.ir 123 J Am Oil Chem Soc (2008) 85:717–721 DOI 10.1007/s11746-008-1254-6