Metabolomics as a tool to discriminate species of the Ananas genus and assist in taxonomic identification

Abstract

The family Bromeliaceae Juss. is a large one, with 78 genera and 3659 species. Ananas is considered the most important genus from an economic perspective, and Brazil ranks third worldwide in the production of pineapple. Fruits of Ananas comosus (L.) Merril.) are most consumed and are widely appreciated all over the world. However, the chemical profile of its leaves and the potential for the production of secondary metabolites have been little explored. Further, the taxonomy of the genus is constantly revised due to the agricultural profile of the genus. In this work, for the first time, we carried out an untargeted metabolomic approach based on liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, followed by multivariate statistical analysis to obtain the metabolic fingerprints of 35 leaf samples of individuals belonging to the two species of Ananas (A. comosus and A. macrodontes) and five botanical varieties of A. comosus (var. microstachys, bracteatus, comosus, erectifolius, and parguazensis) from the Pineapple Active Germplasm Bank, located at Embrapa Cassava and Fruits, Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, Brazil. The metabolomic data of the 35 samples and their taxonomic information were combined to characterize the genus based on the chemical profile of the species and varieties, and, for the first time in the literature, 46 substances were annotated in the two species. Based on multivariate statistical analysis by Principal Component Analysis and Orthogonal Projections Latent Structures Discriminant Analysis using the metabolomic data, it was possible to discriminate among the species and varieties based on their chemical profiles. Our results show that the chemical composition of Ananas leaves can be used to assist in taxonomic identification.