Changes in Chemical Composition of Red and Black Currant Fruits and Leaves During Berry Ripening

ABSTRACT

The composition and variations of sugars, organic acids and phenolic compounds of red and black currant fruits and leaves were studied during the last four weeks of ripening. The results showed that sugar content increased during berry ripening in both species. In comparison, organic acids decreased in red currant, whereas no differences between sampling dates were observed in black currant. Forty-seven individual phenolic compounds, belonging to anthocyanins, flavonols, flavanols, hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives and flavanones were identified in red currant fruits and 52 in black currant fruits by HPLC-MS analysis. In black currant fruits, the major phenolic compounds were anthocyanins (81.51–85.15% of total phenolics), which increased during ripening until the last sampling date. In both red and black currant leaves, 47 phenolic compounds were identified. The content of phenolic compounds in red currant leaves was 1.31-fold to 1.90-fold higher compared to the content in black currant leaves. The most abundant phenolics in both currant leaves were flavonol glycosides, accounting for 58.5–67.9% of total phenolics, and their content was the highest at the end of berry ripening.

KEYWORDS:

• Flavonoids
• phenylpropanoids
• phenylpropanoid pathway
• biochemical composition
• fruit quality

Acknowledgments

This research is part of the program Horticulture P4‐0013‐0481 supported by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS) and the infrastructural centre IC RRC AG (10-0022-0481-001).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [S.G.], upon reasonable request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15538362.2024.2322746.

Authorship contribution

Sasa Gacnik: methodology, validation, writing – original draft, visualization, investigation. Maja Mikulic-Petkovsek: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, validation, supervision, writing – review & editing. Metka Hudina: funding, supervision, writing – review & editing. Robert Veberic: conceptualization, funding, supervision, writing – review & editing.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS) [P4‐0013‐0481].