Biochemical Characterization of Traditional Varieties of Apricots (Prunus armeniaca L.) of the Campania Region, Southern Italy

Abstract

Campania is the most important region of Italy in the apricot cultivation, present mostly in the Vesuvio area. At least to the best of our knowledge, no studies are reporting the biochemical characterization of the considerable number of traditional apricot varieties present on this territory, including the qualitative and quantitative profile of the polyphenols present. Our work evaluated the content of β-carotene, total phenolics, phenolic profiles, ascorbic acid and antioxidant activity of 23 traditional varieties of apricots of the Campania region. Principal component analysis (PCA) highlighted that, in the two main groups, the antioxidant activity was strongly affected by the content of ascorbic acid (−0.89), or slightly affected by the content of total polyphenols (−0.67), respect to the content of ascorbic acid (−0.55), never by β-carotene. Chlorogenic acid (up to 55.07 μg g−1) and catechin (up to 96.15 μg g−1) resulted the most abundant polyphenols recognized through the chromatographic analysis. PCA, extended to the polyphenol profile, confirmed the distribution of the varieties in two large groups, evidencing once again the hierarchical distance of four varieties (“Panzona”, “Paolona” “Baracca” and “Boccucia Eboli”) compared to the others.