Bioactive compounds and physical attributes of Cornus mas genotypes through multivariate approaches

Cornelian cherry fruits are quite rich in bioactive compounds. Natural colour, rich flavonoids and anthocyanins and high antioxidant activity have made the fruits a natural drug. In the present study, antioxidant activity, total flavonoids and total phenolics of naturally growing 18 cornelian cherry genotypes with different phenotypic characteristics were determined. Size and shape parameters of the genotypes were also determined with the image-processing method; sphericity, elongation and shape index were calculated and shapes of two-dimensional fruit images were compared with elliptic Fourier analysis. Antioxidant activity, total flavonoid contents and total phenolic amounts of the genotypes were varied between 55.062 and 152.420 mmol TE · kg⁻¹, 286.40 and 2,882.80 mg QE · kg⁻¹, and 2,644.80 and 12,959.00 mg GAE · kg⁻¹, respectively. Multivariate variance analysis conducted based on physical characteristics revealed that six genotypes were different from the others. Shape analysis with Elliptic Fourier method revealed that the majority of present cornelian cherry genotypes had an oval appearance and a small portion of them had a drop-like appearance. According to discriminant analysis and Hotelling's pair-wise comparison tests, there were five different shape groups for present genotypes. A single genotype was placed into one of these groups, thus it was determined that this genotype was totally different in shape from the others.