RESEARCH ARTICLE Phytochemical and GC-MS analysis of Saudi Arabian Ajwa variety of date seed oil and extracts obtained by the slow pyrolysis method Abdul Qadir 1 & Satya Prakash Singh 1 & Juber Akhtar 1 & Athar Ali 2 & Muhammad Arif 1 Received: 17 November 2016 /Accepted: 6 February 2017 # Institute of Korean Medicine, Kyung Hee University and Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 Abstract The date seeds oil is a mixture of different types of major and minor organic components with potential positive health benefits. Thus, the study was designed to conversion of Ajwa verity of Saudi Arabian date seeds into pyrolysis liquid char oil by slow pyrolysis reactor and its phytoconstituents were determined by GC–MS. The date seed in particle form was pyrolysed in an externally heated pan sand bath. The sand bath was heated upto 500–600 °C by means of a burner for pyrolysis and this temperature is measured by means of a mercury thermometer. During pyrolysis, the tar and oil are released from the seeds and collected in a container. The liquid char oil was dissolved in 100 ml methanol and fractionated with 100 ml n-hexane by using separating funnel. Small por- tion (1 g) of both fraction was subjected to GC-MS analysis. GC-MS analysis results indicated the presence of 40 and 27 different phyto-compounds from n-hexane and methanol frac- tion. The presence of these bioactive compounds confirms the application of the Ajwa variety of date seeds for various me- dicinal activities in future drug discovery system and can be analyzed for anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, cardiovascular, anticancer and immunosuppressant activities. Keywords Ajwa date seed . Pyrolysis . Liquid char oil . GC-MS . Phytoconstituents Introduction The fruit of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is globally marketed as high value commodities, which is produced in many arid and semi-arid regions of the world. It has always played an important role in economic and social life of the people of these regions. Date fruit has always been considered as a principle foods complement by the middle east peoples and a rich source of carbohydrate due to its high sugar, dietary fiber, macro and micro-nutrient contents (Al-Shahib and Marshall 2003; Myhara et al. 1999). Ajwa dates are only cultivated in Saudi Arabia/Al-Madinah Al-Monwarah and usually most of the muslim people break their fast by eating Ajwa dates. Several studies have shown that Ajwa dates are useful for lac- tating women because they help in enriching breast milk and protecting mothers to diseases and infections (Hasan et al. 2010). Ajwa dates are excellent source of the minerals and necessary for the protection of muscle contractions in the body. The other vast advantage of consuming Ajwa dates are that they contain of high iron content which is vital in RBC production and they may also assist to treat anemia (Ragab et al. 2013). Date seeds also have potential health benefits and contain components with various biological actions, such as antiviral, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and some other activities but it is ravage product that could be simply collected from the processing industries of dates or directly from the palm grove or from the gap conditioning stations (Doha and Al-Okbi 2004; Jassim and Naji 2010). The date seeds are too hard to extract out the constituents and almost unutilized. So the waste seed oil can be extracted by slow pyrolysis method and used for different medicinal purpose. Pyrolysis is generally de- scribed as the thermal decomposition of the organic compo- nents into liquid products (Ibarra et al. 2005). In this study, pyrolysis of Ajwa seeds are carried out and after purification of liquid char oil products, its phytoconstituents was Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13596-017-0257-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Muhammad Arif arif_sweet@rediffmail.com 1 Faculty of Pharmacy, Integral University, Lucknow 226026, India 2 Faculty of Science, Jamia Hamdard (Hamdard University), New Delhi 110062, India Orient Pharm Exp Med DOI 10.1007/s13596-017-0257-y Online ISSN 2211-1069 Print ISSN 1598-2386