Perilla Seed Oil

Perilla seed oil is pressed from the mature seed of Perilla frutescens (L.) Britton, an annual aromatic herb of the Lamiaceae, the mint family. The seed carries 35-45% oil, and that oil is the richest common plant source of alpha-linolenic acid (C18:3 n-3, CAS 463-40-1): published germplasm surveys span 47-64% ALA and well-characterised Korean material sits at 63-64%, placing perilla above both linseed and sacha inchi and roughly level with chia. Thovek standardises to a floor of 54% ALA by GC-FID. The balance is linoleic acid at 13-24%, oleic acid at 9-20% and only small amounts of palmitic, around 7%, and stearic, around 1.4%; unsaturated fatty acids make up about 91% of the total. The crop is not exotic to India. Perilla is grown across the Garhwal and Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand as bhanjira and through the North Eastern Himalayan states under local names including unei in Meghalaya, kenie in Nagaland, thoiding in Manipur, silam in Sikkim and chhawhchi in Mizoram, alongside its far larger commercial cultivation in Korea, where the seed is deulkkae, and in Japan and China. Two pressing styles reach the market and they are genuinely different products: unroasted seed gives a pale, near-neutral oil suited to encapsulation and food fortification, while roasted seed gives the dark, strongly aromatic oil used as a Korean finishing oil. That very high ALA content is also the handling problem. Perilla oil oxidises faster than flaxseed or sacha inchi oil, so material is pressed under controlled temperature, nitrogen-blanketed at filling and, where the application allows, dosed with mixed tocopherols; the native tocopherol load is modest, roughly 660-730 mg/kg of gamma-tocopherol with much smaller delta and alpha fractions, and cannot be relied on alone for a long ambient shelf life. Buyers should note the regulatory position early: perilla seed oil is a novel food in the European Union, so placing it on the EU market requires authorisation under Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 notwithstanding its long food history in Asia. Outside the EU it is plant-derived, vegan and vegetarian, and it is a mint-family seed with no relationship to sesame, so it does not attract a sesame allergen declaration.