Rice Bran Phytosterols of Three Widespread Iranian Cultivars

Rice bran sterols have antioxidant activity as well as physiological and biologicaleffects. because of these benefits, the aim of this study is evaluating the quantity andquality of iranian rice bran sterols. three widespread iranian rice cultivars (khazar,hashemi, and alikazemi) were used for determination of their sterol contents. twomethods of sample preparation were compared and the better one was used in this work.rice bran samples were saponified directly after acid hydrolysis. unsaponified materialswere extracted, purified by solid phase extraction, silylated, and their sterol fractionsdetermined by gc-ms. the sterol composition (in mg kg-1 bran) of three cultivars(khazar, alikazemi, and hashemi) were 1,330.69, 1,279.95, 1,313.17 delta-sitosterol; 747.52,696.05, 756.8 campesterol; 112.8, 115.36, 114.24 delta-5-avenasterol, 38.912, 33.08, 38.24
-7-avenasterol; 8.05, 7.07, 7.56c holesterol; 4.20, 3.99, 4.23 brassicasterol; and 2,722.016,2,706.176, 2,717.68 total sterols, respectively. the results showed that there were nosignificant differences between the individual and total sterol contents of these threecultivars (p> 0.05), except campesterol, delta-sitosterol, and delta-7-avenasterol. the highest andlowest sterols were ß-sitosterol and campesterol.