Abstract
Anthocyanins are economically valuable phytochemicals of significant relevance to human health. Industrially extracted from multiple fruit and vegetable sources, anthocyanin yield and profiles can vary between sources and growing conditions. In this study, we focused on three purple-fleshed and one orange-fleshed cultivars of sweet potato—a warm-weather, nutritious crop of substantial interest to growers in northern, cooler latitudes—to determine the yield and diversity of anthocyanins and flavonoids. Acidified ethanol extraction of lyophilized roots yielded ~ 800 mg average anthocyanins/100 g dry weight from all three cultivars. UHPLC-DAD-Orbitrap analysis of sweet potato extracts identified 18 high-confidence, mostly acylated peonidin and cyanidin derivatives contributing to > 90% of the total anthocyanin signal. Further assessment of the untargeted Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry data using deep learning and molecular networking identified over 350 flavonoid peaks with variable distributions in different sweet potato cultivars. These results provide a novel insight into anthocyanin content of purple-fleshed sweet potatoes grown in the northern latitudes, and reveal the large structural diversity of anthocyanins and flavonoids in this popular crop.
Highlights
Anthocyanins are economically valuable phytochemicals of significant relevance to human health
Purple-fleshed sweet potatoes are attractive for general consumption but are used in the health food, specialty chemicals, food processing, and cosmetics industries—the latter avenues possibly fetching higher prices for the growers than traditional grocery markets. It is for these reasons that the cultivation of both orange and purple-fleshed sweet potatoes is being explored in the northern, coolerclimate regions of North America
We focused on characterizing the anthocyanin content of three purple-fleshed varieties to determine if substantial yield of desirable acylated anthocyanins can be obtained in northern latitudes
Summary
Anthocyanins are economically valuable phytochemicals of significant relevance to human health. Further assessment of the untargeted Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry data using deep learning and molecular networking identified over 350 flavonoid peaks with variable distributions in different sweet potato cultivars These results provide a novel insight into anthocyanin content of purple-fleshed sweet potatoes grown in the northern latitudes, and reveal the large structural diversity of anthocyanins and flavonoids in this popular crop. Found in many fruits and vegetables, flavonoids possess antioxidant activities of benefit in managing ageing, stress, cancer and other health conditions, which makes them desirable for cosmetic, nutritional and health industry applications[1,2,3] Because of their color properties, anthocyanins are of significant interest as natural food coloring agents[3,4]. Studies in sweet potato have revealed primarily peonidin and cyanidin derived anthocyanins[14,16], but the overall extent of anthocyanin diversity is not known
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