Okra Seed Oil
INCI Hibiscus Esculentus Seed Oil. Also: Abelmoschus esculentus seed oil, Hibiscus esculentus seed oil, Gumbo seed oil.
Calculate a 100 % Okra Seed Oil bar
That is stoichiometry on a measured composition rather than a guess, and it is about as well determined as a published figure: checked against the 35 Codex oils where both fields come from the same standard, the method's median error is 0.90 % and its 90th percentile 2.74 %, with no meaningful bias. The formula page shows the working. If you have a certificate of analysis for your lot, enter its measured value in the calculator and this estimate is set aside.
Published values
| Saponification value | not published |
| Derived from composition | 195.4 ± 3 % mg KOH/g |
| Used by the calculator | 195.4 mg KOH/g (derived) |
| SAP for NaOH | 0.1393 g/g |
| Iodine value | — |
| INS (SAP − IV) | — |
| Melting point | — |
| Unsaponifiable matter | — |
A bar made of 100 % Okra Seed Oil
Conventional qualities summed from the fatty-acid groups; a single-oil bar is a reference point, not a recipe.
Fatty-acid profile
| Fatty acid | Published range, % | Used | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Myristic acid | C14:0 · saturated | 0.28 | 0.3 |
| Palmitic acid | C16:0 · saturated | 18.01–42.05 (typical 29.24) | 29.2 |
| Palmitoleic acid | C16:1 | 0.38 | 0.4 |
| Stearic acid | C18:0 · saturated | 0.9–4.85 (typical 4.85) | 4.9 |
| Oleic acid | C18:1 | 12.53–29.57 (typical 29.57) | 29.6 |
| Linoleic acid | C18:2 | 31.33–49.73 (typical 31.33) | 31.3 |
| α-Linolenic acid | C18:3 n-3 | 1.24 | 1.2 |
| Arachidic acid | C20:0 · saturated | 0.58 | 0.6 |
| Gadoleic acid | C20:1 | 0.07 | 0.1 |
| Behenic acid | C22:0 · saturated | 0.28 | 0.3 |
| Erucic acid | C22:1 | 0.27 | 0.3 |
| Lignoceric acid | C24:0 · saturated | 0.12 | 0.1 |
Where these numbers come from
Section 2.1 (retail bottles, Oliver Artesian Oils), 2.2 (GC-FID method); Table 1 fatty-acid composition, okra column.
Table 2, 26 genotypes; palmitic, stearic, cis-oleic and cis-linoleic used for min/max.
Fatty-acid comparison table: the present-study cold-pressed oil, and the cyclopropane acids it cites from Anwar et al. 2010; quoted in notes.
Malvalic acid 0.9 and 0.5 %, sterculic 0.3 %, dihydrosterculic 1.5 %; quoted in notes only.
The 'typical' column is Table 1 of Dean 2025 (Front. Nutr. 12:1721761, open access), a retail cold-pressed okra seed oil from Oliver Artesian Oils (Pitts, Georgia, USA), GC-FID (BPX-70 column, normalisation per AOCS Ce 1f-96): myristic 0.28, palmitic 29.24, palmitoleic 0.38, heptadecanoic 0.11 (no key), stearic 4.85, oleic 29.57, linoleic 31.33, alpha-linolenic 1.24, eicosenoic 0.07, erucic 0.27, arachidic 0.58, behenic 0.28, lignoceric 0.12 %; SFA 35.46, MUFA 30.29, PUFA 32.57, together 98.32 % (the remaining 1.7 % is unidentified). Min/max for the four major acids add Kantar et al. 2024 (Food Sci. Nutr. 12(12):10087-10098), cold-pressed oils from 26 Turkish okra landraces and cultivars, GC-FID, Table 2: palmitic 18.01-42.05, stearic 0.90-4.02, cis-oleic 12.53-22.45, cis-linoleic 35.09-49.73 %; that table's trans isomers (C18:1 trans up to 0.32, C18:2 trans up to 1.00 %) and its small C20:2, C20:4 and C22:2 peaks are not stored. Stored bands: palmitic 18.01-42.05, stearic 0.90-4.85, oleic 12.53-29.57, linoleic 31.33-49.73 %. A Chinese cold-pressed oil (Guo et al. 2024, Food Sci. Nutr. 12(4):2393-2407) falls inside them: palmitic 28.75, stearic 3.96, oleic 20.16, linoleic 43.00 %. OKRA SEED OIL IS UNUSUALLY SATURATED FOR A SEED OIL - palmitic acid alone is 28-42 % in almost every sample - and unusually variable in its oleic/linoleic balance. It also carries small amounts of cyclic fatty acids, as cottonseed oil does: Guo et al. cite Anwar et al. 2010 for 1.92 % 2-octylcyclopropaneoctanoic and 0.25 % 2-hexylcyclopropaneoctanoic acid in a Pakistani okra oil (neither was detected in their own sample), and PlantFAdb lists older analyses with malvalic acid at 0.5-0.9 %; none has a key here. SAPONIFICATION AND IODINE VALUE are null: not printed in these documents; the typical composition implies about 195 mg KOH/g. FOR SOAP: about a third saturated, so it firms a bar more than most liquid seed oils while still contributing oleic and linoleic acid. INCI 'Hibiscus Esculentus Seed Oil' is an active CosIng entry without CAS or EC numbers (Hibiscus esculentus is the INCI name for okra, Abelmoschus esculentus).
This record is part of the open ingredient database (ODbL). Found an error or a better primary source? The dataset is on GitHub; corrections with a document link are welcome.