Metabolic profiling of cauliflower under traditional and reduced tillage systems

In this study we determined the nutritional value of cauliflowers under traditional or reduced tillage cultivation system. The content of carbohydrates, proteins, free amino acids, glucosinolates, ascorbate and glutathione were determined separately in immature flowers and corymb stems of cauliflowers. A heat map analysis was applied to all the obtained results for the different tissues and different tillage treatments. The most surprising result was the 1.9 fold higher average concentration of starch and the 2.2 and 1.6 fold lower average concentration of glutamine and tyrosine, respectively, in flowers compared to corymbs. The tillage treatment, on the contrary, did not affect significantly the metabolites profile of the plants which were substantially similar, from a nutritional point of view, except for the free amino acids and glucosinolates. In particular the essential free amino acids average content was 1.4 fold higher under reduced tillage than under traditional tillage and this was mainly due to the 3.5 fold increase of tryptophan. On the contrary the glucosinolates content was about 1.3 fold higher under traditional tillage than under reduced tillage. However a cluster analysis confirmed that the different distributions of metabolites between flowers and corymbs from the same plants were much higher than the difference in metabolites determined by farming methods, suggesting that nutritional characteristics of cauliflower were not significantly affected by reduced tillage.

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