effect of ultrasonic pre-treatment on the biological activities of oil extracted from linum usitatissimum seeds

Abstract: linum usitatissimum seed is considered to be an important oil seed crop that is especially rich in essential fatty acids with biological activities. [1]. the quantity and quality of the oil is associated with its content and chemical constitutes. thusly, to select an adequate extraction technique is of high significance. the hired technique should avoid the decomposition of interest compounds, and maintain the quality and biological activities of the extract [2]. up to now, the extraction of oil from seeds was done using conversational methods such as mechanical expellers or nonpolar solvents [3]. in this research, we aimed to study the effect of ultrasonic pre-treatment prior to oil extraction on the biological activities of oil obtained from linum usitatissimum seeds. after optimization of three parameters including ultrasonic temperature, ultrasonic duration, and ultrasonic power, the antioxidant and cytotoxicity activities of the oils were evaluated. dpph (2,2-diphenyl-1-picryl-hydrazyl-hydrate) free radical was used to test the antioxidant property of the oils. also, the cytotoxic activity of the oils against bh-e adenocarcinoma and qu-db cell lines was determined using the 2,5-diphenyl-2h-tetrazolium bromide (mtt) assay. the results indicated that the oils inhibitory activities depend upon concentration and the increase in the concentration increased the inhibitory percentage. in the concentration range, the synthetic antioxidant manifested further antioxidant activity than the oils. moreover, from obtained results it can be seen that the oil extracted after ultrasonic pre-treatment had significantly higher antioxidant activity compared with conventional method (mechanical expellers). also, the cytotoxicity results exposed that the oil extracted after ultrasonic pre-treatment had higher cytotoxic properties against the studied cell lines. so, ultrasonic pre-treatment prior to oil extraction is obviously an effective method to improve the oil biological activities, comparing to conventional method (mechanical expellers).