engleski

How does abiotic stress influence a health-promoting phytochemicals in Brassica crops?

Crop plants from the Brassicaceae family, including cabbages, kales, broccoli etc., are among the oldest known cultivated plants and are also commercially important vegetables world-wide. They have an important place in the culture and traditional cuisine of world wide, and it is widely used in traditional medicine. Due to affordable price and availability at local markets Brassicaceae stands out as an important source of food, providing nutrients and health-promoting phytochemicals (glucosinolates, phenolic compounds etc.), which particularly attracted much recent scientific attention. In the light of climate changes, Brassica crops may be highly influenced by unpleasant environmental conditions or diverse abiotic stresses. Herein we investigated the impact of abiotic stresses on the profile of specialized metabolites in Brassica species traditionally grown in Croatia (Brassica oleracea var. capitata f. alba cv. ‘Varaždinski’, and B. oleracea var. acephala) and compared with B. rapa ssp. pekinensis, species known as moderate sensitive to abiotic stresses. The results showed that abiotic stress caused qualitative and quantitative changes in specialized metabolites (particularly polyphenolics) and antioxidant activity depend on species and applied stress. These changes in specialized metabolites are discussed in relation to stress tolerance of different Brassica species/varieties.

Brassica crops ; white cabbage ; kale ; abiotic stress ; phytochemicals

This work has been supported by the Croatian Science Foundation (project no. IP-2014-09-4359) and the Unity Through Knowledge Fund (contract no 12/17).