Carrot Carotenoids And Their Quality

In this study, varieties of carrots were used as experimental material, including NIGEL, NEVIS, NANDRIN, CASCADE and XIN HEITIAN WUCHUN. The research was focused on the analysis of carotenoids in carrot by high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC). The content of lycopene, a-carotene and p-carotene during growing and the content of carotenes in different parts of different varieties were measured, in order to study the difference of the development of the content of carotenes among varieties, and try to study during which period carotenes was accumulated mostly in different varieties. Furthermore, the distributing state of different type of carotenes in carrot and the relationship between the color of carrot and the total content of carotenes in carrot were studied too. Meanwhile, we studied the development of some figure facts of different varieties during growing and detected some important facts which affect the qualities. The results showed as follows:Lycopene could not be detected in every variety during growing, showed that lycopene is transformed into a-carotene and 0-carotene immediately in course of the biosynthesis of carotenoids, so lycopene can not be accumulated in carrots.As for the accumulation of carotenoids in varieties of carrots, the content of carotenes of NIGEL and NEVIS got to the highest level when they were harvested, but the content of carotenes of NANDRIN, CASCADE and XIN HEITIAN WUCHUN got to their summit before harvesting, then decreased. It was proved that this phenomenon was not an accidental event, and it was suggested had better be harvested ahead of time for this kind of varieties.There is great difference between the content of carotenes of different parts in different varieties: the content of carotenes of phloem is'higher than xylem's to a great extent, and the results showed a descending trend of the content of carotenes from the top of carrot to lower parts. Then we get the conclusion that carotenoids mainly exist in the phloem and the top part of carrot The rate of thecontent of ct-carotene and p-carotene in different varieties or different parts of same variety is not always the same, showed that a-carotene and P-carotene in different parts are not always biosynthesized at a constant rate.The result of die relationship between the color of carrot and the total content of carotenoids showed the existence of a positive relationship between the color of carrot and the total content of carotenoids. For this reason, we should try to choose the carrot with deep color for higher content of carotenoids.During the anaphase of growing process of carrot, sowed in autumn, carrot is getting heavy and large in great steps. In this phase, we should control the fertilizer at a good level in order to get good outputThe percentage of xylem of NEVIS and NIGEL are the least, and die content of carotenes of NEVIS and NIGEL are the highest, among the five varieties of carrots. According to other important facts, the quality of NEVIS and NIGEL are better than another three varieties of carrots.