Table olive elicits antihypertensive activity in spontaneously hypertensive rats.

BACKGROUND: Table olives are a food with a high content of bioactive compounds with cardioprotective properties, such as oleic acid, polyphenols, and pentacyclic triterpenes. Here, we investigate the effect of the intake of table olives on blood pressure (BP) and body weight in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and their normotensive controls, Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rats. 'Arbequina' table olives (3.85 g kg-1 ) were administered by gavage to SHR and WKY rats in short-term (1 day) and long-term (7 weeks) experiments. BP was measured by the tail-cuff method, and polyphenols and triterpenes were determined in olives and plasma by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. RESULTS: Administration of 'Arbequina' olives to WKY rats did not exert any change in BP in any of the experiments. However, in SHR, the single dose induced a transient reduction in BP of approximately 15 mmHg, from the second to the tenth hour after the administration. In the long-term assay, a similar decrease was established in the second week and was maintained throughout the experiment. Moreover, the daily administration of olives to rats did not affect their body weight when compared with controls in either the WKY rats or SHR. The determination of polyphenols and triterpenes in plasma indicated that, at the end of the experiment, only maslinic acid, oleanolic acid, hydroxytyrosol, and luteolin were found, all of them being compounds with already described capacity to decrease BP. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the daily intake of table olives could decrease BP in hypertension without affecting body weight, indicating that table olives could contribute to improving cardiovascular health. © 2022 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

Genome-wide QTL analysis of tomato fruit cuticle deposition and composition.

Genetics of traits related to fruit cuticle deposition and composition was studied in two red-fruited tomato species. Two mapping populations derived from the cross between the cultivated tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and its closest relative wild species Solanum pimpinellifolium L. were employed to conduct a QTL analysis. A combination of fruit cuticle deposition, components and anatomical traits were investigated and the individual effect of each QTL evaluated. A total of 70 QTLs were identified, indicating that all the cuticle traits analyzed have a complex polygenic nature. A combination of additive and epistatic interactions was observed for all the traits, with positive contribution of both parental lines to most of them. Colocalization of QTLs for various traits uncovered novel genomic regions producing extensive changes in the cuticle. Cuticle density emerges as an important trait since it can modulate cuticle thickness and invagination thus providing a strategy for sustaining mechanical strength without compromising palatability. Two genomic regions, located in chromosomes 1 and 12, are responsible for the negative interaction between cuticle waxes and phenolics identified in tomato fruit. Several candidate genes, including transcription factors and structural genes, are postulated and their expression analyzed throughout development.

Table olive polyphenols: A simultaneous determination by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.

Table olives contain a wide range of polyphenols responsible for protective effects on health that have been associated with a lower prevalence of chronic diseases. A new method to identify and quantify these compounds in table olives, by means of methanol:ethanol (1:1; v/v) extraction followed by LC-ESI-MS/MS, has been developed and validated. The chromatographic column Eclipse-XDB-C18, never used before in this kind of application, provided the best results using Milli-Q water with 0.025% acetic acid and acetonitrile with 5% acetone as eluents. This method allows the quantification of 17 polyphenols, namely, hydroxytyrosol, tyrosol, salidroside, hydroxytyrosol acetate, catechol, vanillic acid, caffeic acid, o-coumaric acid, p-coumaric acid, verbascoside; oleuropein; pinoresinol, apigenin, luteolin, luteolin-7-O-glucoside, quercetin and rutin. The new method has been validated and shows linear correlations (R2>0.996), recoveries superior to 95%, high sensitivity, adequate precision and accuracy (RSD < 15%) as well as a short chromatographic analysis of 9 min. Its application to the analysis of Marfil table olives enabled the quantification of 15 polyphenols, among which hydroxytyrosol (384.1 ±â€¯81.2 mg/kg), tyrosol (201.2 ±â€¯3.8 mg/kg), luteolin (88.0 ±â€¯3.8 mg/kg) and salidroside (85.9 ±â€¯3.2 mg/kg) stand out. Furthermore, this method allows to assess whether the intake of a certain number of olives can meet the health claim associated to olive oil polyphenols (Reg. EU n.432/2012). Our results indicate that the daily intake of only 7 olives, which corresponds to 8 g of edible portion, provide an amount of hydroxytyrosol and derivatives (e.g. oleuropein complex and tyrosol) of 5 mg, according to the health claim of the EU. In view of the results, it could be stated that table olives are an excellent source of bioactive compounds, thus emerging as a promising functional food.