Chemotaxonomy of Hawaiian Anthurium cultivars based on multivariate analysis of phenolic metabolites

Thirty-six anthurium varieties, sampled from species and commercial cultivars, were extracted and profiled by liquid-chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS). Three hundred fifteen compounds, including anthocyanins, flavonoid glycosides, and other phenolics, were detected from these extracts and used in chemotaxonomic analysis of the specimens. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) revealed close chemical similarities between all the commercial standard cultivars, while tulip-shaped cultivars and species displayed much greater chemical variation. Principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) supported the results from HCA and were used to identify key metabolites characteristic of standard and tulip cultivars and to identify chemical markers indicative of a particular ancestry. Discriminating metabolites included embinin, 4, which was characteristic of standard-shaped spathes and indicated ancestry from Anthurium andraeanum, while isocytisoside 7-glucoside, 7, was found in the majority of tulip-shaped cultivars and suggested that Anthurium amnicola or Anthurium antioquiense had contributed to their pedigree.