Chlorogenic Acid Content of Meal from Cultivated and Wild Sunflowers1

Abstract

The chlorogenic acid (CA) content of dehulled and defatted sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) seeds was determined on a portion of the germplasm maintained at the Modern Research Station. This material represented 167 inbred accessions, 387 highly inbred Morden lines, and 42 North American wild H. annuus collections.Cultivated sunflower seeds contained from 1.1 to 4.5% CA with an overall mean of 2.8% and a normal distribution. Approximately 6% of the cultivated inbreds contained 2% or less CA. The wild sunflower lines averaged 2.1% CA with almost half containing less than 2% CA.There was a highly significant correlation between CA content and oil content in all populations. Seed size was not related with CA content. In the wild population, low CA content was highly significantly correlated with high hull content. Although there was no association between country of origin and CA content for the cultivated inbreds, wild sunflowers collected in the southern USA contained lower levels of CA than those collected north of 40°N latitude.