Food and Public Health 2012, 2(1): 16-23 DOI: 10.5923/j.fph.20120201.04 Assessment of Total Lipid Fractions and Fatty Acids Composition in Raw, Germinated Barleys and Talbina Products M. Kamal E. Youssef, Fawzy Abd El-Kader El-Fishawy, El-Sayed Abd El-Naby Ramadan, Asmaa Mohamed Abd El-Rahman * Food Sci & Tech. Dept, Faculty of Agric. Assiut Uni, Assiut. Egypt Abstract Talbina is a food product with high potential applications as a functional food. Talbina was prepared from two barley varieties namely: Giza126 and Giza130 by adding whole barley flour to water (1:10 w/v) and (1:5 w/v) for ger- minated barley then heating at 80 ° C for 5 minutes with continuous stirring until reaching a porridge like texture. The study included the fractionation and determinations of the compounds of raw, germinated barley, talbina, germinated talbina and commercial talbina oil. Besides, the all treatments recorded rather slight decrease in crude fat content, which ranged from 1.5 to 2.9%. Using TLC technique the total lipids of raw, germinated barley and their talbina products were fractionated to eight fractions and triglycerides showed the highest percentage among lipid fractions (33.92-60.82%) followed by 1,3diglycerides (6.78-20.43%). The fatty acids analysis revealed that there were 11 fatty acids in the studied treatments oil namely: caprylic, lauric, myristic, palmitic, stearic, arachidic, oleic, linoleic, linolenic and gadoleic. The essential fatty acid linoleic (C18:2) recorded the highest percentage of the unsaturated fatty acids (53.59%) in germinated 130. While palmitic acid (C16:0) recorded the highest value of saturated fatty acids in germinated 126 (17.44%). Keywords Barley, Talbina, Germination, Functional Properties, Total Lipids, Fatty Acids 1. Introduction Barley (Hordeum Vulgare.L) is an ancient and important cereal grain and occupies about 9.4% of the total world area under cereal production and ranks fifth in the world (Sharma and Gujral, 2010). Barley is available in both hulled and hull-less forms, hull-less barley, which does not require dehulling,offers some advantages for food uses; hulless barley had been shown to have greater nutritional value compared to covered barley in several studies with monogastric animals (Bhatty et al., 1979). Water absorption capacity (WAC) measure the volume occupied by the granule or starch polymer after swelling in excess water, while the water solubility index (WSI) deter- mines the amount of free polysaccharide or polysaccharide released from the granule after addition of excess water (Sriburi &Hill, 2000). Oil absorption is very important as it affects textural and sensory properties of food through en- hancement of flavor retention and improvement of mouth feel, key function of fat (Hung and Zayas, 1992) Lipids are located throughout the barley kernel and are * Corresponding author: asmaa8499@yahoo.com (Mohamed Abd El-Rahman) Published online at http://journal.sapub.org/fph Copyright © 2012 Scientific & Academic Publishing. All Rights Reserved classified into two basic fractions: nonstarch lipids and starch lipids. Nonstarch lipids include all lipids other than those inside starch granules. Lipids are also classified as polar or non polar, a characteristic that affects solubility and depends on molecular structure (Rosemary et al., 2008). Lipid is concentrated in the embryo, and although the em- bryo represents only about 3% of the kernel by weight, it furnishes about 18% of the total lipid in barley, while the endosperm contains about 3% lipid, but by virtue of size, furnishes about 77% of the total lipid, Most of the en- dosperm lipid is found in the aleurone layer. The remaining 5% of the total kernel lipid is found in the hull (Price and Parsons 1975, 1979; Briggs 1978). Furthermore, Erkan et al., (2006) reported that fat ranged between 1.62-1.92% in hulled barley and 1.9% in hull-less barley. Similar results were shown by Welch (1978), who found that oil content ranged from 1.9 to 4.1% and repre- sented positive correlation with protein content. Price and Parsons, (1979) studied the composition of fatty acids from hulless barley and their research revealed that linoleic acid was the predominant unsaturated fatty acid and palmitic acid was the major saturated fatty acid of the neutral lipids, phospholipids and glycolipids, which is in agreement with our results. Morrison (1993a) also noted that the fatty acids in barley are similar to those in wheat except that barley tends to