The Composition and Vitamin a Value of the Carotenoids of Pumpkins of Different Colors

Abstract

The carotenoid pigments of the yellow and orange flesh varieties of the pumpkins Cucurbita moschata and C.maxima were identified and quantified, α‐Carotene, β‐carotene, ζ‐carotene, β‐carotene 5,6‐epoxide, β‐cryptoxanthin, lutein, taraxanthin, zeaxanthin, luteoxanthin and auroxanthin were detected in the pumpkins. The difference was that the yellow variety of C. moschata had no zeaxanthin. The quantitative patterns of the two varieties were similar. Although some quantitative variation was observed, lutein, β‐carotene and luteoxanthin predominated. The difference in the color between the two varieties resulted from these quantitative differences in carotenoid composition. The vitamin A activity of the C. moschata variety with yellow flesh was higher than that of the C. maxima, which had many oxygenated carotenoids.

Dependence of Pumpkin Yield on Plant Density and Variety

“…Pumpkin is popular vegetable with high productivity, high nutritive value and good storability. Pumpkin has good nutritive benefits with balanced colories and is believed to be a good source of carotenoids [15][16][17].…”

Vegetables and Vegetable Products

“…As esterified xanthophylls are less polar than free xanthophylls and tend to fractionate with carotenes, saponification is a necessary step for accurate measurement of provitamin A carotenoid content (Lewis and Merrow 1962;Schaffer et al 1986;Hidaka et al 1987;Arima and Rodriguez-Amaya 1988). Cut pieces of convenient size from different parts of the fruit are used to overcome the possibility that various parts of the fruit might differ in carotenoid content.…”

“…Carotene content in two cultivars of the USA and three breeding lines of C. maxima and the Brazilian C. maxima Exposi~ao, all high in total carotenoids, were relatively high, ranging from 10.1 to 20.6 J.lg/g (Lee et al 1984;Arima and Rodriguez-Amaya 1988), but a Japanese accession had only 7.5 J.lg/g (Hidaka et al 1987). Carotene content in two cultivars of the USA and three breeding lines of C. maxima and the Brazilian C. maxima Exposi~ao, all high in total carotenoids, were relatively high, ranging from 10.1 to 20.6 J.lg/g (Lee et al 1984;Arima and Rodriguez-Amaya 1988), but a Japanese accession had only 7.5 J.lg/g (Hidaka et al 1987).…”

Pigments in Vegetables

“…The widely applied official method for the determination of provitamin A was introduced in 1955 and is still in use (AOAC, 1984). The carotenoids of corn (Quackenbush et aI., 1961;Neam~u et aI., 1982), cucurbits (Rodriguez et aI., 1976;Hidaka et al, 1987;Arima and Rodriguez-Amaya, 1988), broccoli (Gross, 1979) and peppers (Cholnoky et aI., 1955(Cholnoky et aI., , 1958bCurl, 1962Curl, , 1964 were all separated on MgO-Hyflo Super Cel columns.…”

“…The carotenoid distribution of the Japanese pumpkin investigated by Matsuno (1988) is shown in Table 71. The carotenoids of yellow-and orange-fleshed Japanese pumpkins C. moschata and C. maxima were investigated by Hidaka et al (1987). The carotenoids were separated by liquid-liquid partition followed by standard column chromatography.…”