(1)H NMR Combined with Multivariate Statistics for Discrimination of Female and Male Flower Buds of Populus tomentosa

(1)H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance ((1)H NMR) combined with multivariate statistics was adopted to discriminate female and male flower buds of Populus tomentosa in the study. Samples of 11 female and 16 male flower buds of P. tomentosa were collected in Beijing, China. (1)H NMR spectra were acquired on a 400 MHz spectrometer. In total, 30 chemical compounds were identified with standards and literature according to chemical shifts, peak areas, and multiplicity. Principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA), and supervised orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) were applied to discriminate female and male flower buds. An apparent grouping trend (R(2)X, 0.809; Q(2), 0.903) between female and male groups was exhibited with PCA and HCA. The two groups were also well discriminated with OPLS-DA (R(2)X, 0.808; R(2)Y, 0.976; Q(2), 0.960). Combined with variable importance in projection (VIP) > 1.0 and p < 0.05 of OPLS-DA, it was found that the content of daucosterol, β-sitosterol, ursolic acid, and betulonic acid in male group was higher than that in female, which should be the key differences of chemical constituents in female and male flower buds of P. tomentosa. The study demonstrated that (1)H NMR combined with multivariate statistics could be used to discriminate female and male plants and clarify differences, which provided a novel method to identify the gender of dioecious plants.