Open Access

ARTICLE

Comparative Metabolomics Analysis between Red- and White-Flowered Common Buckwheat Cultivars

by Jiao Deng^1,2,#, Fen Dong^3,#, Chaoxin Wu¹, Jiali Zhao¹, Hongyou Li¹, Juan Huang¹, Taoxiong Shi¹, Ziye Meng¹, Fang Cai¹, Qingfu Chen^1,*, Pingfang Yang^2,*

1 Research Center of Buckwheat Industry Technology, School of Life Sciences, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, 550001, China
2 State Key Laboratory of Biocatalysis and Enzyme Engineering, School of Life Sciences, Hubei University, Wuhan, 430026, China
3 Affiliated Hospital of Jianghan University, Wuhan, 430015, China

* Corresponding Authors: Qingfu Chen. Email: ; Pingfang Yang. Email:
# These authors contributed equally to this study

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2021, 90(3), 859-870. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2021.014625

Received 13 October 2020; Accepted 05 December 2020; Issue published 30 March 2021

Abstract

Common buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum), a specialty crop in southwest China, is not only used as a supplement to primary grain crops but also to produce beverages, such as tea and wine. To fully exploit the products made from common buckwheat flower, ultra-performance liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization– tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC–ESI–MS/MS) was conducted to analyze the metabolites in red- (‘Guihong 2’) and white-flowered (‘Fengtian 1’) buckwheat cultivars. A total of 784 metabolites were identified of which flavonoids were the largest group with 191 components, followed by organic acids and derivatives (126), and amino acids and derivatives (95). Besides, dozens of phenylpropanoids, nucleotides and derivates, lipids, alkaloids as well as several kinds of indole derivatives and sterides were detected. Among these rich varieties of metabolites, 24 metabolites were only detected in the red flower that mainly included 8 anthocyanins and 6 flavones, while 22 metabolites were only detected in the white flower, which mainly contained 5 lipids, 5 flavonoids, and 5 organic acids and derivatives. Our results enrich the metabolites’ information of buckwheat and may be helpful for the exploitation of products from common buckwheat flowers.

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