Differences in Important Chemical Components and Free Radical Scavenging Activities of the Ginger Germplasm Resources from Fujian

Abstract:

[Objective]This study aims to analyze the important chemical components of different ginger germplasm resources from Fujian and evaluate their comprehensive quality and free radical scavenging activities.[Method]Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight-mass spectrometry (LC-QTOF-MS) were employed to determine the importance chemical components in 13 ginger germplasm resources. Differences in the chemical compounds were analyzed by the cluster analysis and principal component analysis (PCA). The free radical scavenging activities of the ginger germplasm resources against ABTS⁺ were further evaluated.[Result]A total of 65 chemical compounds were identified from the 13 ginger germplasm resources, including 44 volatile compounds and 21 non-volatile compounds. Among them, one gingerol and 2 dihydrocurcumin derivatives were the newly detected compounds in ginger. The highest total peak areas of volatile compounds and non-volatile compounds were detected in ginger germplasm resources J9 and J10, respectively. According to the results of cluster analysis, the 13 ginger germplasm resources were clustered into 3 groups: Group I including J9 and J8, Group II including J2, J5, J4, J1, J7, and J3, and Group Ⅲ including the remaining 5 resources. PCA identified 29 differential representative components including eucalyptol, neral, citral, zingiberene, α-curcumene, β-bisabolene, β-sesquiphellandrene, and 1-dehydro-6-gingerdione. Regarding the comprehensive score of ginger quality, the top 2 ginger germplasm resources were J9 and J8. The ginger germplasm resources exhibited the ABTS⁺ free radical scavenging activities with the IC₅₀ values in the range of 69.00~172.33 μg/mL, and the ginger germplasm resource J3 displayed the strongest ABTS⁺ free radical scavenging activity. The correlation analysis showed that gingerols made greater contributions to the ABTS⁺ free radical scavenging activity than diarylheptanoids.[Conclusion]This study can screen out the elite ginger germplasm resources suitable for different processing products of ginger and provide data support for the deep processing industry of ginger.