Chemotaxonomy of Hawaiian Anthurium Cultivars Based on Multivariate Analysis of Phenolic Metabolites

Thirty-six
anthurium varieties, sampled from species and commercial
cultivars, were extracted and profiled by liquid-chromatography–mass
spectrometry (HPLC-MS). Three hundred fifteen compounds, including
anthocyanins, flavonoid glycosides, and other phenolics, were detected from
these extracts and used in chemotaxonomic analysis of the specimens.
Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) revealed close chemical similarities
between all the commercial standard cultivars, while tulip-shaped
cultivars and species displayed much greater chemical variation. Principal
component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis
(PLS-DA) supported the results from HCA and were used to identify
key metabolites characteristic of standard and tulip cultivars and
to identify chemical markers indicative of a particular ancestry.
Discriminating metabolites included embinin, 4, which
was characteristic of standard-shaped spathes and indicated ancestry
from Anthurium andraeanum, while isocytisoside
7-glucoside, 7, was found in the majority of tulip-shaped
cultivars and suggested that Anthurium amnicola or Anthurium antioquiense had contributed
to their pedigree.