Background. Oat grains accumulate substantial amounts of various phenolic compounds that possess biological activity and have a potential to considerably increase health benefits of oats as a food. Avenanthramides (AVA) is an important group of these compounds due to their antioxidant, anti-itching, anti-inflammatory, antiproliferative activities.Materials and methods. Using combined HPLC and LC-MS analyses, we provide the first comprehensive review of the total avenanthramide content and composition in cultivated and wild oats. The AVA content was measured in 32 wild and 120 cultivated oat accessions obtained from the global collection of the N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR), St. Petersburg, Russia.Results and conclusion. The wild hexaploid A. sterilis L. had the highest total AVA content, reaching 1825 mg kg–1. Among cultivated accessions, naked oat cv. ‘Numbat’ (Australia) had the highest AVA content, 586 mg kg–1. The AVA composition exhibited a wide diversity among the analyzed samples. Accessions were identified where AVAs A, B and C, which are generally considered as major AVA, had a low percentage, and instead other AVAs prevailed. The AVA content in eight oat cultivars revealed significant annual changes in both the total AVA content and the proportions of individual AVAs. Using HPLC analyses, 22 distinguishable peaks in AVA extracts of oat seeds were detected and quantified. Several of these peaks, which have not been previously documented, presumably represent different AVAs. Further analyses are needed to detail these findings and to determine the specific AVA structures in oat grains.

Phylogenetic position of the unique grass genus Coleanthus within the tribe Poeae s. str. is discussed based on molecular phylogenetic analysis of the marker sequences, ITS and trnL–trnF. Moreover, taxa more or less related to Coleanthus were involved in our study for the maximal accuracy of the molecular phylogenetic analysis. Subtribe Coleanthinae (=Puccinelliinae) is monophyletic according to both datasets, nuclear and chloroplast genes, that probably shows certain evolutionary distance from other Poeae s. str. We confirmed the results of previous morphological studies that placed Coleanthus close to the genus Phippsia but at the same time we have not found any evidences of the affinity between the genus Phippsia and the second putative ancestor, Deschampsia. The clade which contains Coleanthus and Phippsia occupies the sister position to all other genera of the subtribe Coleanthinae. The genus Phippsia produces hybrids with Puccinellia, ×Pucciphippsia, but the relationship obtained by our data is far more distant that was considered before from its morphological features. The genus Puccinellia forms a single monophyletic clade—sister to the genus Sclerochloa and former Colpodium s. l. (Paracolpodium, Catabrosella) which are monophyletic with Catabrosa. In partial contradiction to previous research (Soreng et al. 2015)—we found that the subtribe Coleanthinae is rather distant from two-chromosome grasses in ITS analysis though chloroplast genes show the sister position of the species from the 2-chromosome grasses group, Colpodium versicolor (2n = 4), to Coleanthinae. Also we detected multiple reticulation events in the tribe Poeae s. str. and some of them—within the subtribe Coleanthinae. This can explain an uncertain position of the two-chromosome grasses in relation to Coleanthinae.

The article addresses the issues of using metabolomic analysis to study genetic resources of cereal crops in order to (1) determine phylogenetic linkages between species (the degree of domestication); (2) within species to describe genetic diversity according to its responses to biotic and abiotic stressors and biochemical characteristics (chemical compounds) determining food, feed and technological quality indicators; and (3) select the most resistant and highest-quality geno-types for complex breeding use.

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Background. Structuring and phenotyping genetic diversity is an important aspect of the work with breeding sources and materials. In the Introduction, the authors pointed out the role of N.I. Vavilovs scientific foresight in defining the topical trend in researching the genetic diversity of a crop, particularly the analysis of its biochemical composition. As the target of their research, the authors chose biochemical characters identifiable in the process of metabolomic analysis conducted by means of gas chromatography with mass spectrometry. Materials and methods. The object was the grain of naked and covered forms of common oat (Avena sativa L.) from the collection held by the Oat, Rye and Barley Genetic Resources Department of VIR. The analysis of oil fatty acid content and metabolomic research were performed using the method of gas-liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry on the chromatograph Agilent 6850 (USA). Results. The obtained metabolomic spectra which reflected the metabolomic status of genotypes of various ecogeographic origin were compared among themselves using statistical (principal component) analysis methods. The results of the comparison are discussed by referring to the most important groups of metabolites significant for forming the traits of resistance to stressors as well as the characters related to food qualities of grain products. Special attention has been paid to biologically active compounds determining the functional value of the products for human nutrition: the sum of phenolics in covered forms is five times higher than that in naked ones and the content of glycine amino acid in covered forms is five times higher than in naked grain, with a similar proportion in the content of organic acids, sugars, etc. Conclusion. Differences between metabolomic profiles of naked and covered forms have been detected and statistically verified. Accessions with the most optimal nutritional composition have been identified for food purposes and for the development of resistance to biotic and abiotic environmental stresses.

Zingeria (Poaceae) is a small genus that includes Z. biebersteiniana, a diploid species with the lowest chromosome number known in plants (2n = 4) as well as hexaploid Z. kochii and tetraploid Z. pisidica, and/or Z. trichopoda species. The relationship between these species and the other low-chromosomes species Colpodium versicolor are unclear. To explore the intragenomic polymorphism and genome composition of these species we examined the sequences of the internal transcribed spacer 1 of the 35S rRNA gene via NGS approach. Our study revealed six groups of ribotypes in Zingeria species. Their distribution confirmed the allopolyploid nature of Z. kochii, whose probable ancestors were Colpodium versicolor and Z. pisidica. Z. pisidica has 98% of rDNA characteristic only for this species, and about 0.3% of rDNA related to that of Z. biebersteiniana. We assume that hexaploid Z. kochii is either an old allopolyploid or a homodiploid that has lost most of the rRNA genes obtained from Z. biebersteiniana. In Z. trichopoda about 81% of rDNA is related to rDNA of Z. biebersteiniana and 19% of rDNA is derived from Poa diaphora sensu lato. The composition of the ribotypes of the two plants determined by a taxonomy specialist as Z. pisidica and Z. trichopoda is very different. Two singleton species are proposed on this base with ribotypes as discriminative characters. So, in all four studied Zingeria species, even if the morphological difference among the studied species was modest, the genomic constitution was significantly different, which suggests that these are allopolyploids that obtained genomes from different ancestors.

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