With a current annual world production of more than 30 million tons and a total growing area of about 1.5 million hectares the cultivated carrot (Daucus carota L.) ranks among the top ten vegetable crops. Although, its typical sweet flavor is favored all around the world, the palatability of carrots and its products might be strongly decreased by a sporadic bitter taste which is often the reason for consumer complains. This off-flavour is induced by abiotic and biotic stress factors during harvesting, transportation, storage and processing. Although recent application of a SENSOMICS approach gave first insight into individual bitter tasting phytochemicals in carrots, their up-regulation during abiotic stress still remains elusive. In order to gain a more comprehensive knowledge on the chemical mechanisms involved in quality changes of cultivated carrots in response to abiotic stress factors like water stress or post-harvest mechanical (transport-) stress, numerous non-volatile key metabolites of different stressed and native carrot genotypes were comparatively characterized by means of UPLC-TOF-MS metabolic profiling. Software-assisted marker molecule selection in stressed carrots, followed by preparative chromatographic purification revealed the chemical structures of bitter tasting phytochemicals by means of LC-MS, LC-MS/MS, and 1D/2D-NMR experiments. Accurate quantitation of these target molecules by means of UPLC-MS/MSMRM in carrots before and after stress challenge of the same genotypes revealed for the first time novel insights into the stress-induced metabolic response of distinct carrot genotypes. These results might help to navigate carrot breeding programs and to optimize post-harvest treatment of carrots from producer to consumer/processor towards the production of sensorially preferred carrot products.

Molecular assessment of metabolome changes in carrots (Daucus carota L.) induced by abiotic stress challenges

250th National Meeting (2015)

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