Polyphenolic Compounds in Blackcurrants

In the project "Core collection of Northern European gene pool of Ribes - RIBESCO" (AGRI GEN RES 071) we aimed at identifying valuable plant material for efficient conservation and shared responsibilities among participating countries. The objective of the present study was to screen and evaluate Ribes genotypes, kept at Balsgard in south Sweden, for content of important phenols. We studied major catechins and anthocyanins by HPLC-EIS-MS. The analysis revealed a large variation among the 21 accessions for every phenolic compound studied. Thus the coefficient of variation was 28% for epicatechin, 39% for epigallocatechin, 40% for catechin, 12% for cyanidin-3-O-rutinoside, 22% for delphinidin-3-O-rutinoside, 39% for delphinidin-3-O-glucoside, 45% for cyanidin-3-O-glucoside and 56% for peonidin-3-O-rutinoside. The variation among accessions in total catechins (34%) was considerably larger than the variation in total anthocyanins (14%). Principal component and hierarchical cluster analyses discriminated particularly well between accessions for single phenolic compounds of total catechins and anthocyanins for cultivars sampled during two years. The multivariate analyses based on these phenolic compounds successfully discriminated between diverse plant material. This technique will be useful for analysis of future core collections when data is available from a single year or from a single plant.