Abstract: To establish an effective evaluation method for safflower seed quality and, more broadly, provide a theoretical basis for the breeding and quality improvement of safflower. The total fatty acid contents and the relative contents of nine fatty acids in safflower oils extracted from 82 safflower seed samples from different habitats were analyzed using gas chromatography. Membership function transformation and principal component analysis (PCA) were applied to comprehensively evaluated the main nutritional quality characteristics of safflower oil. The total fatty acid contents and the relative contents of nine fatty acids were different in the 82 safflower oil samples, with coefficients of variation of 0.98%–111.99%. The average contents of total fatty acid were 22.16–27.23 mg/100 g, and the average contents of linoleic acid ranged between 78.54% and 82.45%. The correlation analysis showed that the total fatty acids were positively correlated with linoleic acid (C18:2) and palmitic acid (C16:0), and negatively correlated with oleic acid (C18:1n12 and C18:1n9). By PCA, we classified the nine fatty acids into three PCA factors. PC1, including linoleic acid (C18:2), oleic acid (C18:1n9), stearic acid (C18:0) and tetracycline acid (C24:0); PC2, including palmitic acid (C16:0) and linolenic acid (C18:3); and PC3, including oleic acid (C18:1n12), eicosanoic acid (C20:0) and eicosaenoic acid (C20:1). The three principal components explained 42.721%, 30.426% and 16.435% of the total variation, respectively, and 89.852% together. According to the membership function value and weight of each factor, we conducted comprehensive evaluation and ranking of safflower oils by the main nutritional quality indicators. The top ten safflower germplasms with the highest comprehensive quality evaluation scores were sample 09 from Xinjiang, sample 24 from Yunnan, sample 05 from Sichuan, sample 41 from Liaoning, sample 66 from Fengqiu, sample 55 from Weihui, sample 32 from Hebei, sample 71 from Bozhou safflower, sample 22 from Yanjin, and sample 78 from Jiangsu.

Key words: safflower oil; fatty acids; gas chromatography; principal component analysis; comprehensive evaluation