Tocopherol and total phenolic content in virgin coconut oil (VCO) extracted from three varieties of coconut

Coconut is a tree usually found in tropical areas and has been called as "The Tree of Life". Three varieties of coconut were studied including two parental and one hybrid variety namely West African Tall (WAT), Malayan Yellow Dwarf (MYD) and MATAG (Malayan Yellow Dwarf x Tagnanam Tall: MYD x TAG). Virgin Coconut Oil was prepared from the three varieties of coconut by using centrifugation method. This study was carried out to find out the significant difference of a-tocopherol content between the varieties of coconut and which varieties has higher total phenolic content in VCO. The centrifugation process was carried out in high speed centrifugation at 12000 rpm, 27 °C temperature for 120 minutes. Analysis of a-Tocopherol of the VCO samples was done by using reverse phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with UV detection. Folin-Ciocalteu's method was employed for analysis of total phenolic content for VCO samples. The Software Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20 was utilized for statistical analysis. One way ANOVA of Tukey test was chosen in the experiment to test whether there is significant difference in total phenolic content between variety of MATAG, WAT and MYD coconut. The results showed that the yield of VCO was 1.53%, 1.64% and 1.70% for MATAG, WAT and MYD coconut respectively. a-Tocopherol was not detected for all VCO. MATAG has the highest total phenolic content among the three varieties, 11.564 μg GAE / ml sample. In addition, there were significant differences (p<0.05) in total phenolic content between VCO of MATAG and MYD. MATAG coconut has higher potential as source of antioxidant. This variety is the most suitable and recommended to be used in the production of VCO based products.