Flavonoid Concentration Diversity of 3 Different Species in the Phaseoleae Tribe.

The functional vegetable species including Lablab purpureus L. Sweet, Macrotyloma uniflorum (Lam.) Verdc., and Teramnus labialis (L.f.) Spreng are in the Phaseoleae tribe. Seeds from 10 L. purpureus and 7 M. uniflorum accessions originated from the field during 2009 and 2009 to 2010, respectively at Griffin, GA. However,  seeds from 15 T. labialis accessions originated from greenhouse grown plants because of photoperiod sensitivity. Flavonoids have been shown to have anti-cancer potential. The flavonoid data from all three species were subjected to an ANOVA, mean separation, cluster, and principal component analysis. Significant flavonoid concentrations were identified from all species. Overall, T. labialis seeds produced significantly more quercetin (ranging from 0.616 – 2.12 mg/g) than the other 2 species. The cluster analysis showed 5 distinct clusters for flavonoid content in the 3 species. The Teramnus labialis accessions showed 3 clusters with the highest flavonoid concentrations (ranging from 0.2073 to 0.4978 mg/g). The M. uniflorum accessions produced an intermediate concentration of flavonoids (0.0766 mg/g), and the lowest flavonoid concentrations were observed in the L. purpureus accessions (0.0030 mg/g). The principal component analysis showed that the first and second components accounted for 70 and 28% of the total variation. Lablab purpureus and T. labialis were high in principal component 1 with coefficients of  0.6659 and  0.6626, respectively. However, T. labialis was high in principal component 2 with a coefficient of 0.9393. The T. labialis accessions produced superior flavonoid concentrations relative to the other two species. Separate clusters for L. purpureus and T. labialis were observed in principal component 1. A common cluster for M. uniflorum was observed in principal component 2.