Combining bioactive compounds and antioxidant activity profiling provide insights into assessment of geographical features of Chinese jujube

Abstract

As the largest jujube cultivating areas of the world, the market price and quality of Chinese jujube are obviously affected by its producing regions in China. Therefore, traceability of Chinese jujube has become an important issue. To search the suitable geographical labels of Chinese jujube, 26 major cultivars from five geographical regions of China were investigated by evaluating their bioactive compounds and antioxidant activity profiling. Multivariate statistical techniques (e,g., PCA, PLS, VIP value) applied to the above-obtained data were further used to identify geographical origin in different areas of Chinese jujube. The results indicated that the highest median contents of total phenols (TP) and flavonoids (TF) of Chinese jujube were originated from Ningxia and Henan provinces, both of which also exhibited the stronger bioactivity. p-Hydroxybenzoic acid and rutin exhibited the highest contents among the all detected individual phenolic compounds. The highest median contents of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) and polysaccharides were all found in Chinese jujube samples of Xinjiang province. In particular, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, rutin, cAMP, cGMP and polysaccharides can be regarded as the potential biomarkers in distinguishing the geographical origin of Chinese jujube. Additionally, the high altitude and latitude might be benefit for the accumulation of cAMP, cGMP and polysaccharides (primary metabolites), and high longitude and annual precipitation maybe improve the contents of TP and TF (secondary metabolites). These information could provide an effective methods in distinguishing the geographical features of Chinese jujube, and also be benefit for the products development.