Sugar profiles as a promising tool in tracing differences between potato cultivation systems, botanical origin and climate conditions

Abstract

This research proposes a new way of tracing differences between potato cultivation systems, botanical origin, and climate conditions by using sugar profiles. A set of 90 potato tubers of four varieties with different ripening times, cultivated in three types of agricultural systems: conventional (C), integral (I), and organic (O) were characterized based on sugar profiles of their bulk and peel. A total of nineteen sugars were quantified. In order to determine the source of variation among the types of production, the years of production and varieties, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted. The results indicated that starch may be considered an important indicator of the type of production, botanical origin, and ripening time. Additionally, the analyses showed that sugar macro and microcomponents such as fructose, glucose, saccharose, sorbitol, trehalose, arabinose, turanose and maltose were the main factors for the differentiation of production types, production years and botanical origin of potato.