Abstract:
Tobacco sucrose-esters are important precursors of tobacco aroma components and play an important role in enhancing the aroma and moisturizing of cigarettes. In order to analyze the composition and content of sucrose-esters (SE) in the glandular trichome secretion of sun/air-cured tobacco germplasms, the content of 5 SEs with different molecular-weight in the flowers of 80 sun/air-cured tobacco germplasms were determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS). The data were analyzed by correlation analysis, cluster analysis, and principal component analysis. The SE contents of the 80 sun/air-cured tobacco germplasms were 198.19- 4410.45 μg/g (fresh mass), showing a normal distribution. The SE with the highest content is SEIV, and the one with the lowest content is SE (I). The correlation analysis revealed that there is a significant positive correlation between SEI and SEII, and that both SEI and SEII are negatively correlated with SEIII, SEIV, and SEV. The 80 sun/air-cured tobacco germplasm were clustered into 5 groups, and the difference of SE content among 5 groups was significant. Based on principal component analysis, 10 germplasms (i.e., X2, X47, X75, X73, X78, X5, X70, X14, X41, X3) with high level of sucrose-esters were identified. These results could provide materials for developing tobacco cultivars with high-aroma quality and exploiting the natural aroma of cigarettes.