Molecular Profiling - Fruit Carotenoids Components of Six American Heirloom Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum)

Abstract

Fruit pigments of six vine-ripening American heirloom tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) were analyzed: the green-ripe ‘Aunt Ruby’s German Green’, the red-ripe ‘Black from Tula’, ‘Cherokee Purple’ and ‘German Johnson Regular Leaf’ and the yellow-ripe ‘Kellogg’s Breakfast’ and ‘Yellow Brandywine Platfoot Strain’ which were grown in Hungary (Godollo). In total, twenty-one type of pigments were determined by Reverse Phase (RP) High- Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC): the orange colorations of lutein, β-carotene, β-cryptoxanthin, mutatoxanthin and neoxanthin, the red-orange colorations of lycopene, lycopene-epoxide 1, lycopene-epoxide 2, lycoxanthin, 9-cis-lycopene, 13-cis-lycopene, lycopene-diepoxide 1 and lycopene-diepoxide 2 and the third group of colorations of violaxanthin, neochrome, prolycopene, neurosporene-epoxide, neurosporene, ζ(Zeta)-carotene, ζ- carotene-like, and α(alfa)-cryptoxanthin. Tomato ‘Black from Tula’ showed the highest content of β-carotene (23.56 g kg-1). The highest lycopene content (19.25 g kg-1) was found in the ‘Cherokee Purple’ and an extremely high prolycopene (syn.: tetra-cis-lycopene or all-trans-lycopene) content was found in the two yellow fruited tomatoes of ‘Kellogg’s Breakfast’ and ‘Yellow Brandywine Platfoot Strain’ (100.87 and 70. 99 g kg-1, respectively). Brix indexes did not show significant differences. Based on the results suggestions for growing purposes and further use in metabolomics and molecular and DNA profiling are given.