Effect of geographical origin on lipid content and fatty acids composition of bee collected pollen

Abstract

Among the essential nutrients found in bee pollen, lipids comprise one of its principal and widely researched compounds with variable content and fatty acids composition depending on pollen’s botanical and geographical origin. Although plant source effect on pollen lipids has been partially studied, the impact of geographical origin remains unclear and also, the analysis of polyfloral pollen samples from diverse regions may lead to inaccurate results. Thus, in the present study, monofloral bee pollen samples, Cistus criticus, and Sinapis arvensis, were collected from different areas to identify the effect of geographical origin on pollen lipid profile, excluding the impact of botanical origin. The total lipid content of Cistus pollen ranged from 2.50% to 3.24% and of Sinapis pollen from 7.64% to 9.06%, while statistically significant differences were found among the studied areas, both for the two species. However, it seems that regardless of origin, Sinapis pollen is a rich source of total lipid content, contrary to Cistus pollen. Likely, it was found that geographical origin affected their fatty acid composition. The presence of oleic acid (cis C18:1) was dominant in all Cistus pollen samples and ranged from 50.75% (Central Macedonia) to 65.78% (Attiki), while all Sinapis pollen samples exhibited high content of alpha-linolenic acid (C18:3), with the low average percentage (41.71%) found in Crete and the highest (52.94%) in Central Macedonia. The results showed that the determination of geographical origin effect on lipids profile of bee pollen should be considered for the establishment of global quality criteria.

Keywords:

• Bee pollen
• geographical origin
• total lipid content
• fatty acids composition
• Cistus creticus
• Sinapis arvensis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.