Comparative In Vitro Antioxidant Capacity and Terpenoid Profiling of Pumpkin Fruit Pulps from a Serbian Cucurbita maxima and Cucurbita moschata Breeding Collection.

Milorad Miljić,Erika Martinelli,Luigi Lucini,Gabriele Rocchetti,Milka Brdar-Jokanović,Aleksandra Mišan,Fabio Marcheggiani,Elisabetta Damiani,Sanja Krstić

doi:10.3390/antiox10101580

Abstract

Pumpkin is considered a healthy and functional food. The consumption of pumpkins and pumpkin-based foods has been shown to confer several beneficial effects on human health due to their antioxidant capacity and terpenoid content. Consequently, this study aimed to characterize the in vitro antioxidant capacity (using FRAP and ABTS assays), terpenoid profile (using an untargeted lipidomics approach via high-resolution UHPLC-Orbitrap mass spectrometry), and carotenoid content (by HPLC-DAD) in pumpkin fruit pulp from accessions differing for species (11 Cucurbita maxima and 9 Cucurbita moschata), cultivar, and origin, belonging to a Serbian breeding collection. These accessions are candidates for inclusion within programs intended to improve pumpkin fruit quality. The results obtained in this work allowed us to highlight the best marker compounds, discriminating both the region of accession collection or breeding (“origin”) and the plant species. Furthermore, our findings have helped to identify the most suitable antioxidant-rich varieties to select for national breeding programs for improving human health. These findings provide valuable information to the overall current understanding of the potential health benefits of pumpkins and the discriminant triterpenoids underlying the C. maxima and C. moschata accessions investigated here, which include those of Serbian and non-Serbian origin.

Highlights

IntroductionAmerica but are grown and consumed worldwide [1]
Pumpkins are annual vines or trailing plants that originated in Central to SouthAmerica but are grown and consumed worldwide [1]
From comparing the absorbance spectra for the different pumpkin pulps, one can observe that they all had a maximum peak in the visible region centred around 450 nm, which was attributed to carotenoids containing between 9 and 10 conjugated double bonds [37]

Summary

Introduction

America but are grown and consumed worldwide [1] They belong to the genus Cucurbita of the Cucurbitaceae family, similar to melons, cucumbers, zucchini, etc. All parts of the plant from the Cucurbitaceae family are edible (seeds, flowers, roots, leaves, and fruits), and some parts such as flowers (pumpkins) and root (chayotte) can be found as ingredients in traditional cuisine [3]. Antioxidants 2021, 10, 1580 main factors that contribute to the nutritional and medicinal value of pumpkin fruits are their high total content of carotenoids and the presence of pectin and non-pectin polysaccharides, vitamins (A, C, E), dietary fibres, minerals (K, P, Mg, Fe, and Se), phenolic compounds (flavonoids, phenolic acids), and other compounds that possess health benefits [10,11,12,13,14,15]. The pumpkin fruit is categorized as a functional antioxidant food due to various bioactive compounds such as polyphenols, triterpenoids, flavonoids, coumarins, cucurbitacins, and carotenoids, having significant antioxidant activity [16]

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