(Wiley, 2016) Tierno, Roberto; López Maestresalas, Ainara; Riga, Patrick; Arazuri Garín, Silvia; Jarén Ceballos, Carmen; Ruiz de Galarreta, José Ignacio; Proyectos e Ingeniería Rural; Landa Ingeniaritza eta Proiektuak
BACKGROUND: Over the last two decades, the attractive colours and shapes of pigmented tubers and the increasing concern
about the relationship between nutrition and health have contributed to the expansion of their consumption and a specialty
market. Thus, we have quantified the concentration of health promoting compounds such as soluble phenolics, monomeric
anthocyanins, carotenoids, vitamin C, and hydrophilic antioxidant capacity, in a collection of 18 purple- and red-fleshed potato
accessions.
RESULTS: Cultivars and breeding lines high in vitamin C, such as Blue Congo, Morada and Kasta, have been identified. Deep
purple cultivars Violet Queen, Purple Peruvian and Vitelotte showed high levels of soluble phenolics, monomeric anthocyanins,
and hydrophilic antioxidant capacity, whereas relatively high carotenoid concentrations were found in partially yellow coloured
tubers, such as Morada, Highland Burgundy Red, and Violet Queen.
CONCLUSION: The present characterisation of cultivars and breeding lines with high concentrations of phytochemicals is an
important step both to support the consideration of specialty potatoes as a source of healthy compounds, and to obtain new
cultivars with positive nutritional characteristics. Moreover, by using near infrared spectroscopy a non-destructive identification
and classification of samples with different levels of phytochemicals is achieved, offering an unquestionable contribution to the
potato industry for future automatic discrimination of varieties.
