Abstract
Recently, wheat has attracted attention as a functional food, rather than a simple dietary energy source. Accordingly, whole-grain intake increases with an understanding of bioactive phytochemicals in bran. The development of colored wheat has drawn more attention to the value of bran owing to its nutritional quality, as well as the antioxidant properties of the colorant. The present 1H NMR-based chemometric study evaluated the compositional improvement of radiation-induced mutants in purple wheat by focusing on the predominant metabolites with high polarity. A total of 33 metabolites, including three choline derivatives, three sugar alcohols, four sugars, 13 amino acids, eight organic acids, and two nucleosides, were identified throughout the 1H NMR spectra, and quantification data were obtained for the identified metabolites via peak shape-based quantification. Principal component and hierarchical cluster analyses were conducted for performing multivariate analyses. The colored original wheat was found to exhibit improvements compared to yellow wheat in terms of the contents of primary metabolites, thus highlighting the importance of conducting investigations of polar metabolites. The chemometrics studies further revealed mutant lines with a compositional enhancement for metabolites, including lysine, proline, acetate, and glycerol.