Passion Fruit Seed Oil
Answered by: Conrad Richter
Question from: Oliver Langert
Posted on: October 01, 2006

We are planning a passion fruit farm in Ethiopia, with processing to concentrated juice.

With 300 ha we will also produce every year around 450t of passion fruit seeds (Passiflora edulis flavicarpa). The seeds in great around 23% oil.

My questions:

How much of oil can you extract out of passion fruit (pressing)?

Is there a market for this oil?

If yes, do you have any information about the value per kg?

Cold presses can squeeze out 60-70% of a seed’s oil content. Some better presses can get up to 85% yield. Using a conservative 60%, you should be able to produce 62 tonnes of seed oil.

Yes, there is a market for the oil. There are specialty cosmetic products on the market that feature passion fruit seed oil. The Body Shop, for example, sells a "Passion Fruit Dry Oil Mist" skin spray, a blend of passion fruit seed oil (from Brazilian purple fruit) and sesame seed oil. However, I am unable to establish what the market price for the oil is or how much the annual trade volume is.

Duke’s "CRC Handbook of Alternative Cash Crops" (CRC Press, Boca Raton, 1993) reports that the oil from the purple type has the following fatty acid composition: 6.78% palmitic, 1.76% stearic, 0.34% arachidic, 19.0% oleic, 59.9% linoleic, and 5.4% linolenic acids. The 8.9% saturated to 84.1% unsaturated balance and the fatty acid composition are comparable to other high quality edible oils such as walnut oil.

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