Chemical and Biological Evaluation of Nutritional Characteristics of Egyptian Pecan

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Food Science and Technology Department, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt

Abstract

Two different cultivars of pecan, Carya illinoinensis, grown in Egypt, namely: Desirable and Moneymaker were analyzed for their amino acids composition, chemical score, protein efficiency ratio (PER) and net protein ratio (NPR) as parameters for their protein quality. Moreover, total cholesterol (TC), cholesterol fractions and serum triglycerides of experimental rats fed on pecan were determined. The concentration of arginine in pecan protein was found in high amount (166.94 and 147.20 mg/g protein for Desirable and Moneymaker, respectively) which offers health benefits. Lysine was the first limiting amino acid in
both cultivars and the chemical score was 0.75 for Desirable and 0.66 for Moneymaker pecan cultivars. The
protein quality of Desirable cultivar was higher than that of Moneymaker, meanwhile, they both had good protein quality where their Adj-PER and NPR were 2.30, 2.25 and 3.27, 3.25, for Desirable and Moneymaker cultivars, respectively, compared to 2.50 and 3.43 for casein diet as a reference protein. The blood serum analysis of the rat groups fed on pecan diet had lower levels of LDL-C, V.LDL-C and triglycerides, but had higher level of HDL-C than those fed on casein diet. Our results show that the protein of pecan kernels
(plant protein) is in good quality, especially for Desirable cultivar, and their fat may improve human serum lipid profile by lowering LDL-C and V.LDL-C and increasing HDL-C.

Keywords

Main Subjects

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics