Polyphenolic composition and content in the ripe berries of wild Vitis species

Authors: LIANG, ZHENCHANG - Cornell University; Yang, Yingzhen; CHEN, LAILIANG - Cornell University; Zhong, Gan-Yuan

Submitted to: Food Chemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/1/2011
Publication Date: 1/9/2012
Citation: Liang, Z., Yang, Y., Chen, L., Zhong, G. 2012. Polyphenolic composition and content in the ripe berries of wild Vitis species. Food Chemistry. 132:730-738.

Interpretive Summary: To help understand the richness of phytochemicals, polyphenols in particular, in cultivated grape cultivars and their wild species, we initiated a project systematically surveying the phenotypic variation of polyphenolic compositions and contents in the USDA-ARS Vitis Clonal Repositories maintained in Davis, California and Geneva, New York. The current study characterized the polyphenolic compositions and contents in the ripe berries of 147 grape accessions from 16 Vitis species for two consecutive years. A total of 48 polyphenolic compounds including 28 anthocyanins, 6 flavonols, 6 flavanols, 6 hydroxycinnamic acids, and 2 hydroxybenzoic acids, were identified via HPLC-MS and quantified by HPLC-DAD. We observed tremendous variation, both among and within species, for all the compounds studied and documented that the contents for many of these compounds were much higher than that reported for the most widely cultivated species V. vinifera. We found that in the wild species both mon- and di-glucosides of anthoyanins were abundantly present (20% or more). We also observed that more than 60% of the anthocyanins were non-acylated in all the wild species but V. labrusca which had about 35% anthocyanins non-acylated. We identified a number of accessions of wild grape species with very high levels of polyphenolic contents. This study will be an important addition to our effort in developing a comprehensive database of nutrition- and health-related secondary metabolites in the Vitis germplasm for grape improvement.

Technical Abstract: To explore wild genetic resources for improving fruit and processing quality of cultivated grape cultivars, we characterized the polyphenolic composition and content in the ripe berries of 147 grape accessions from 16 Vitis species for two consecutive years. These species, except for Vitis Yenshansis which originated in China, represented various key cold-hardy types of North American wild grapes maintained in the USDA-Agricultural Research Service Vitis Clonal Repository in Geneva of New York, US. A total of 48 polyphenolic compounds, including 28 anthocyanins, 6 flavonols, 6 flavanols, 6 hydroxycinnamic acids, and 2 hydroxybenzoic acids, were identified via HPLC-MS and quantified by HPLC-DAD. Compared with the reported polyphenolic profiles of most widely cultivated species Vitis vinifera, the wild grape species had unique presence of abundant di-glucoside derivatives of anthocyanins. In addition, anthocyanins in most wild species were predominantly non-acylated. The mean contents for anthocyanins, flavanols, flavonols, hydroxycinnamic acids, and hydroxybenzoic acids were 9.610, 0.769, 0.093, 0.441 and 0.027 mg g-1 FW, respectively. They were about 2 to 10 folds higher than their respective counterparts in V. vinifera. As expected, mots of these groups of compounds were correlated negatively with berry weight, but positively with the content of soluble solid acids.