Metabolites profiling of Ganoderma-infected oil palms rachis grown on tropical soils reveals choline phosphate and 2-oxoglutaramate as potential biomarkers in the disease detection

Abstract

The use of gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and multivariate statistics of principal component analysis (PCA) for metabolomics profiling of non-infected and Ganoderma boninense (G. boninense) infected oil palm rachises crude extracts grown on tropical soils have been evaluated. This combination has allowed us to quickly investigate the differences in metabolite variations between non-infected and infected oil palm. Two m/z values of biological samples from Oxisol soil Choline phosphate (184.072) and 2-Oxoglutaramate (146.0440) were found to be significantly higher in Ganoderma-infected oil palm rachis but absent in healthy samples. Another intriguing discovery is that the three m/z value of biological samples from Oxisol soils increased significantly while remaining absent in biological samples from Ultisol soil 129.066 (4-Amino-4-cyanobutanoic acid, 2-Amino-4-cyanobutanoic acid), 132.066 (5-Aminolevulinic acid) and 146.044 (2-Oxoglutaramate). By comparing healthy and Ganoderma-infected oil palm tree rachis samples, it was discovered the cluster distribution of metabolites detected to be present in between groups based on the first two components of multivariate analyses.