GC-MS-based metabolomics reveals dynamic changes in the nutritionally important metabolites in coconut meat during nut maturation

Abstract

Coconut is an economically important tropical palm fruit. Among various coconut products, the endosperm (coconut meat) is a rich source of several nutritionally rich metabolites.The coconut fruit typically takes 10–12 months to attain commercial maturity. Although metabolite profile of coconut meat vary during nut development and maturation because of transformation of liquid endosperm into solid endosperm, there are as such no reports describing the real dynamics of these changes. Therefore, in this work, we applied gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)-based metabolomics technology to identify the alteration in the metabolite levels during nut development. Metabolite profile was carried out from 'Chowghat Orange Dwarf ' (COD) and 'Malayan YellowDwarf' (MYD) varieties of coconut at three critical nut development stages. We identified a total of 43 and 40 metabolites from 'COD' and 'MYD', variety, respectively. By employing the partial least squares-discriminant analysis we identified specific fatty acids as important biomarker metabolites for actual prediction of nut maturity stages. These results show several patterns of variation in metabolite composition and level, especially in the primary metabolites, during the process of nut maturation. These fundamental metabolomic profile data will be very useful for understanding the appropriate nut maturity stages and their corresponding nutritional value.