Sugarcane Metabolome Compositional Stability in Pretreatment Processes for NMR Measurements

Abstract

Sugarcane is essential for global sugar production and its compressed juice is a key raw material for industrial products. Sugarcane juice includes various metabolites with abundances and compositional balances influencing product qualities and functionalities. Therefore, understanding the characteristic features of the sugarcane metabolome is important. However, sugarcane compositional variability and stability, even in pretreatment processes for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolomic studies, remains elusive. The objective of this study is to evaluate sugarcane juice metabolomic variability affected by centrifugation, filtration, and thermal pretreatments, as well as the time-course changes for determining optimal conditions for NMR-based metabolomic approach. The pretreatment processes left the metabolomic compositions unchanged, indicating that these pretreatments are compatible with one another and the studied metabolomes are comparable. The thermal processing provided stability to the metabolome for more than 32 h at room temperature. Based on the determined analytical conditions, we conducted an NMR-based metabolomic study to discriminate the differences in the harvest period and allowed for successfully identifying the characteristic metabolome. Our findings denote that NMR-based sugarcane metabolomics enable us to provide an opportunity to collect a massive amount of data upon collaboration between multiple researchers, resulting in the rapid construction of useful databases for both research purposes and industrial use.

A Data-Driven Approach to Sugarcane Breeding Programs with Agronomic Characteristics and Amino Acid Constituent Profiling

“…The first ratoon means sprouts from newly harvested canes, and the second ratoon means sprouts from first harvested canes. Three cropping types were used: new planting, first ratoon, and second ratoon; their planting (or previous harvesting) seasons were April or May-next January, January-November (early December), and November-next November, respectively [30].…”

“…We cultivated plants in accordance with customary agricultural practices [30,35], that is, single-bud stalks were embedded in the field with the plant density generated using a 110 cm width of furrow and 15 cm plant distance for new planting. Chemical fertilizer was applied as a basal dressing (7.2 g N m −2 , 12.0 g P 2 O 5 m −2 , 6.0 g K 2 O m −2 ) and top dressing twice (4.5 g N m −2 , 4.5 g K 2 O m −2 ) according to the regional cultivation guideline.…”

“…Stalks for which postharvest measurements were completed were used for juice extraction within 3 d after harvest. Sugarcane juice was prepared using the same method as in previous studies [30,39], which is as follows: The stalks were cut into two or three node lengths using a stem cutting machine (PC250-TM, Bunmei Noki K.K., Kagoshima, Japan). All stalks were shredded using a shredder (KS-MS, Matsuo Co., Ltd., Kagoshima, Japan).…”

“…Most studies targeting sugarcane metabolites have tested various parts of the plant, including the leaves [23][24][25][26], buds [27], roots [23,26], rinds [28], and stalks [23,[25][26][27]29]. Few studies have analyzed sugarcane juice collected from breeding programs at research institutes [30] or from sugar-producing factories [7,16,19]. Therefore, this study focused on sugarcane juice obtained from breeding programs for commercial cultivars.…”

Surface-Coated Acupuncture Needles as Solid-Phase Microextraction Probes for In Vivo Analysis of Bioactive Molecules in Living Plants by Mass Spectrometry

“…As the needle is inserted and then pulled out of the body, a small amount of tissue is sampled onto the needle tip, similar to a biopsy. Considering these features, it was expected that by extending the probe ESI concept to acupuncture needles, a new method that allowed easy sampling and sensitive MS detection could be readily developed and easily implemented, in particular for the rapid in vivo detection of plant metabolites [ 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ].…”