Evaluation Of Nutritional Quality In Some Chrysanthemum Cultivars

Chrysanthemum, as one of the famous traditional flowers in China, is not only widely used as cut flower, potted plant and garden ornamental flowers, but also as edible ones. In order to establish the chrysanthemum nutritional quality evaluation system, nutritional compositions were determined in fifty chrysanthemum cultivars, furthermore, principle component analysis was conducted, which will be aid to select cultivars of higher edible value, thereby enrich edible cultivars. On the other hand, the changes of nutritional quality were studied before and after cold storage, which will provide theoretical guidance to the cold storage, fresh preservation and transportation of edible chrysanthemum cultivars. The main results are as follows:(1) The contents of soluble sugar, soluble proteins, vitamin C, water and coarse fiber in the fifty cultivars were 1.86%-8.40%, 0.43%-1.28%, 17.85 mg/100g-69.88 mg/100g, 80.09%-91.41% and 0.75%-6.83%, respectively; while the contents of water were all over 80% among the fifty chrysanthemum cultivars. The contents of organic acid were 0.07%-0.44%, no significant difference in organic acid was observed among different cultivars. Twenty cultivars with high nutritional quality were selected by subordinate function method.(2) The contents of mineral elements and amino acids in the selected twenty cultivars were further investigated. The contents of zinc, iron, magnesium, calcium, natrium and kalium were 0.18°/o-0.60%, 1.18%-11.44%, 13.10%-19.85%, 24.79%-68.38%, 0.58%-3.22% and 201.04%-427.40%, respectively. The presence of essential amino acids to human (7 types), medical amino acids (8 types) and aroma-improving amino acids (4 types) was detected in the twenty cultivars.(3) Significant difference in nutritional quality was observed between three commercial edible cultivars, among which 'Jinxingjiuyin' has the highest nutritional quality. 'Xiangbinzi', an ornamental cultivar, showed higher nutritional quality than 'Jinxingjiuyin', other ornamental cultivars of 'DF-6' and 'Qiuyun' were also of good nutritional quality, which are promising edible chrysanthemum cultivars.(4) The main nutritional elements of three edible cultivars 'Baohuatangyijin', 'Zifengmudan' and ' Jingxingjiuyin' were analyzed after being stored at 0-4℃for 5 days and 10 days. The contents of nutritional elements slightly decreased after being stored for 5 days, the contents of vitamin C significantly decreased, while little changes of contents of soluble sugar and organic acid were observed; the contents of soluble sugar, soluble protein and vitamin C decreased by 2.17% to 6.89%, 18.2% to 31.1% and 27.7% to 56.0%, respectively; Content of organic acid remained overall unchanged, but content of crude fiber increased by 4.4 to 21.2%. For amino acid, content of ALA declined by 37.7% to 60.8%, while content of Ser remained almost unchanged. The traditional edible cultivars of 'Zifengmudan' and 'Baohuataoyijin' from Guangdong province of China are more tolerant to cold storage than Japanese cultivar of 'Jingxingjiuyin'.