Lipid and sugar profiles of various barley cultivars (Hordeum vulgare)

Abstract

The lipid components and soluble sugars in flour samples of different cultivars of barley (Hordeum vulgare), involving winter malting barley, winter forage barley, springbarley, and hulless barley, were identified). Fatty acids were extracted from flour samples with n-hexane, and derivatized into volatile methyl esters, using TMSH (trimethylsulfoniumhydroxide) in methanol. Soluble sugars were extracted from defatted and dried samples of barley flour with 96% ethanol, and further derivatized into the correspondingtrimethylsilyl (TMS) oximes, using hydroxylamine hydrochloride solution and BSTFA (N,O-bis-(trimethylsilyl)-trifluoroacetamide). The hexane and alcoholic extracts of barleycultivars were analyzed by GC-MS system. Lipid and sugar compositions were very similar in all barley cultivars. Therefore, multivariate analysis was applied to numericalvalues of automatically integrated areas of the identified fatty acid methyl esters and TMS oximes of soluble sugars. The application of hierarchical cluster analysis showed agreat similarity between the investigated flour samples of barley cultivars, according to their fatty acid content (0.96). Also, significant, but somewhat less similarity was observedregarding the content of soluble sugars (0.70). These preliminary results indicate the possibility of distinguishing flour made of barley, regardless of the variety, from floursmade of other cereal species, just by the analysis of the contents of fatty acids and soluble sugars.