Identification of the composition of fatty acids in Eucommia ulmoides seed oil by fraction chain length and mass spectrometry

In order to automatically identify fatty acids in plant seed oils, a method was developed to search all saturated fatty acid methyl esters in the sample, subsequently calculate the ECL value of each fatty acid, and finally identify the molecular structure for each component by comparing the ECL of the interest and that in the customised database. Our method was applied to analyse the fatty acid composition of Eucommia ulmoides seed oil. The results show that major polyunsaturated fatty acids are α-linolenic acid (56.5093% of total fatty acids, TFAs) and linolelaidic acid (12.6563% of TFAs). Meanwhile, the main monounsaturated fatty acid is oleic acid whose percentage in the TFAs is 15.8008. Palmitic acid and steartic acid are the dominant saturated fatty acids representing 9.8165% and 2.5942% of TFAs, respectively. The UFA/SFA ratio (6.57) is higher than the recommended value (3) by nutritionists.