Nigella damascena

About: Nigella damascena is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 121 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1390 citations. The topic is also known as: love-in-a-mist & Devil-in-a-bush.

Comparison of Oil from Nigella damascena Seed Recovered by Pressing, Conventional Solvent Extraction and Carbon Dioxide Extraction

Abstract: Nigella damascena seeds were extracted by cold press, in a Soxhlet apparatus and with CO2 The yield obtained with liquid CO2 was only 10.57%. EtOH (1%) increased the yield by 50%. CO2-extracts were separated into the 2 fractions. The yield in the first fraction increased 2 times by increasing the pressure from 150 to 350 bar. EtOH (1%) increased the yield 2 times at 150 bar. Linoleic acid was the major fatty acid (43.71 to 50.83%), followed by oleic (14.87 to 23.65%), stearic (15.07 to 23.24%), and palmitic (10.13 to 12.07%) acids. Elemenes (21.38% to 29.16%) were the most abundant volatile constituents, free fatty acids constituted from 35.04% to 51.18%, the majority being linoleic (32.83 to 40.58) (Range for linoleic should be 24.51 to 40.58%-see Table 3) and oleic acids (4.96 to 13.32). (Less)

The Pyridine Ring and the Problem of its Biosynthesis

Abstract: THE relationships of anthranilic acid and tryptophane to nicotinic acid are well established in a number of organisms1 and it has been suggested that in the higher plants the pyridine ring may be formed in a like manner2. It has been shown, however, that tryptophane-3-14C is not a precursor of damascenine in Nigella damascena L., nor did it give rise to radioactive trigonelline when fed to pea seedlings3. It is possible that in the two plants studied the enzyme system necessary for the initial oxidation of tryptophane to kynurenine is lacking and that the hydroxyanthranilic acid in one case (damascenine) and the pyridine ring in the other (trigonelline) are synthesized from different precursors and by a different pathway.

Nigella in the Mirror of Time A Brief Attempt to Draw a Genus' Ethnohistorical Portrait

Abstract: era in the Ranunculaceae (buttercup) family: it com prises only about 15 species if considered in the wid er sense, thus including the sister taxa Garidella and Komaroffia (Zohary 1983; Donmez /Mutlu 2004). In this study, we also treat the various (sub)species within the Nigella arvensis complex as one single species – a rather strong simplification when consid ering the results obtained by Strid (1970) or Bittkau/Comes (2005; 2008), but sufficient for our pur pose in this paper. All members of the genus Nigella are therophytes (annuals that overwinter as seeds) with a short life cycle, requiring open habitats to flourish. This makes several of them occur frequently in anthropogenic ecosystems. As an example, the well-known orna mental species Nigella damascena (love-in-a-mist) can nowadays be observed as a rapid colonizer of fallow land around the Mediterranean. Taxa from the Nigella arvensis complex have played a role in the segetal vegetation of Europe’s agriculture since at least the Late Iron Age (