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Evaluation of the Farming Potential of Echinacea Angustifolia DC. Accessions Grown in Italy by Root-Marker Compound Content and Morphological Trait Analyses

The Echinacea genus includes a number of species that are commercially employed for the preparation of herbal products. Echinacea angustifolia DC. is one of these and is widely used, mainly for its immunomodulating properties, as it contains a wide range of compounds that belong to different chemica...

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Autores principales: Aiello, Nicola, Marengo, Arianna, Scartezzini, Fabrizio, Fusani, Pietro, Sgorbini, Barbara, Rubiolo, Patrizia, Cagliero, Cecilia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7412158/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32660086
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants9070873
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author Aiello, Nicola
Marengo, Arianna
Scartezzini, Fabrizio
Fusani, Pietro
Sgorbini, Barbara
Rubiolo, Patrizia
Cagliero, Cecilia
author_facet Aiello, Nicola
Marengo, Arianna
Scartezzini, Fabrizio
Fusani, Pietro
Sgorbini, Barbara
Rubiolo, Patrizia
Cagliero, Cecilia
author_sort Aiello, Nicola
collection PubMed
description The Echinacea genus includes a number of species that are commercially employed for the preparation of herbal products. Echinacea angustifolia DC. is one of these and is widely used, mainly for its immunomodulating properties, as it contains a wide range of compounds that belong to different chemical classes. In particular, echinacoside, cynarin and lipophylic alkylamides are the main specialized metabolites of the roots and can be considered to be marker compounds. In this work, 65 E. angustifolia accessions have been compared in a field trial in Italy, with the aim of investigating the variability/stability of the weight and chemical composition of their roots in order to identify the accessions that are most promising for future genetic-improvement programs. The morphological characteristics of the aerial parts have also been investigated. Seventeen samples were discarded due to germination or plantlet-development issues. Seven of the remaining accessions were identified as being different Echinacea species after a combined phytochemical and morphological evaluation. The morphological traits of the epigeal part, the root weight and the chemical composition data of the 41 confirmed E. angustifolia accessions were submitted to multivariate statistical analysis and a moderately homogenous sample distribution, with low selected-marker variability, was observed. Good echinacoside content was detected in almost all roots (>0.5%). However, two groups of accessions stood out because of their interesting features: One group possessed small roots, but had a high concentration of marker compounds, while another had highly developed roots and a good amount of marker compounds. These accessions can therefore be exploited for future selection work.
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spelling pubmed-74121582020-08-17 Evaluation of the Farming Potential of Echinacea Angustifolia DC. Accessions Grown in Italy by Root-Marker Compound Content and Morphological Trait Analyses Aiello, Nicola Marengo, Arianna Scartezzini, Fabrizio Fusani, Pietro Sgorbini, Barbara Rubiolo, Patrizia Cagliero, Cecilia Plants (Basel) Article The Echinacea genus includes a number of species that are commercially employed for the preparation of herbal products. Echinacea angustifolia DC. is one of these and is widely used, mainly for its immunomodulating properties, as it contains a wide range of compounds that belong to different chemical classes. In particular, echinacoside, cynarin and lipophylic alkylamides are the main specialized metabolites of the roots and can be considered to be marker compounds. In this work, 65 E. angustifolia accessions have been compared in a field trial in Italy, with the aim of investigating the variability/stability of the weight and chemical composition of their roots in order to identify the accessions that are most promising for future genetic-improvement programs. The morphological characteristics of the aerial parts have also been investigated. Seventeen samples were discarded due to germination or plantlet-development issues. Seven of the remaining accessions were identified as being different Echinacea species after a combined phytochemical and morphological evaluation. The morphological traits of the epigeal part, the root weight and the chemical composition data of the 41 confirmed E. angustifolia accessions were submitted to multivariate statistical analysis and a moderately homogenous sample distribution, with low selected-marker variability, was observed. Good echinacoside content was detected in almost all roots (>0.5%). However, two groups of accessions stood out because of their interesting features: One group possessed small roots, but had a high concentration of marker compounds, while another had highly developed roots and a good amount of marker compounds. These accessions can therefore be exploited for future selection work. MDPI 2020-07-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7412158/ /pubmed/32660086 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants9070873 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Aiello, Nicola
Marengo, Arianna
Scartezzini, Fabrizio
Fusani, Pietro
Sgorbini, Barbara
Rubiolo, Patrizia
Cagliero, Cecilia
Evaluation of the Farming Potential of Echinacea Angustifolia DC. Accessions Grown in Italy by Root-Marker Compound Content and Morphological Trait Analyses
title Evaluation of the Farming Potential of Echinacea Angustifolia DC. Accessions Grown in Italy by Root-Marker Compound Content and Morphological Trait Analyses
title_full Evaluation of the Farming Potential of Echinacea Angustifolia DC. Accessions Grown in Italy by Root-Marker Compound Content and Morphological Trait Analyses
title_fullStr Evaluation of the Farming Potential of Echinacea Angustifolia DC. Accessions Grown in Italy by Root-Marker Compound Content and Morphological Trait Analyses
title_full_unstemmed Evaluation of the Farming Potential of Echinacea Angustifolia DC. Accessions Grown in Italy by Root-Marker Compound Content and Morphological Trait Analyses
title_short Evaluation of the Farming Potential of Echinacea Angustifolia DC. Accessions Grown in Italy by Root-Marker Compound Content and Morphological Trait Analyses
title_sort evaluation of the farming potential of echinacea angustifolia dc. accessions grown in italy by root-marker compound content and morphological trait analyses
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7412158/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32660086
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants9070873
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