Polyphenolic profiles of Basque cider apple cultivars and their technological properties

The polyphenolic compositions of 31 Basque cider apple cultivars were determined in pulp, peel, and juice by high-performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection analysis of crude extracts and after thiolysis. Total polyphenols are distributed in a wide concentration range depending on the cultivar. Procyanidins are the class of polyphenols that present major concentrations in apple. Their average degrees of polymerization range from 4 to 8 depending on the cultivar. Apple cultivars were technologically classified into bitter and nonbitter categories using different classification systems obtained by applying several pattern recognition techniques, such as principal component analysis, K-nearest neighbors, soft independent modeling of class analogy, partial least-squares, and multilayer feed-forward-artificial neural networks, to apple pulp, peel, or juice data (individual polyphenol concentrations, total procyanidin content, and the average degree of polymerization of procyanidins). Bitter apple cultivars present higher contents of flavan-3-ols and/or dihydrochalcones than nonbitter cultivars. Detailed knowledge of the polyphenolic profile of each apple cultivar affords information about their susceptibility to oxidation, their sensory properties (bitterness, astringency), and their possible influence on the characteristics and quality of the final product (juice, cider) when apples are processed.