[Main carotenoids in pressed seeds (Cucurbitae semen) of oil pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo convar. pepo var. styriaca)].

Various use of the oil-pumpkin offers reason for the phytochemical analysis of seed-meal's carotene pigments. Column chromatography was performed on the adsorbents MgO, Celite and CaCO3 with hexane and benzene as eluents. HPLC separation of different pigments was carried out on a 6 microns reverse phase packing with a ternary gradient elution method using a diode-array detector. The main components of the press-residue were lutein [3,3'-dihydroxy-alpha-carotene = (3R,3'R,6'R)-beta,epsilon-carotene-3,3'-diol; 52.5%] and beta-carotene (beta,epsilon-carotene; 10.1%). In addition to the above-mentioned pigments it was successful to reveal the presence of violaxanthin, luteoxanthin, auroxanthin epimers, lutein epoxide, flavoxanthin, chrysanthemaxanthin, 9(9')-cis-lutein, 13(13')-cis-lutein, 15-cis-lutein (central-cis)-lutein, alpha-cryptoxanthin, beta-cryptoxanthin and alpha-carotene (beta,epsilon-carotene) in small quantities.