Metabolic Discrimination of Safflower Petals of Various Origins Using 1H NMR Spectroscopy and Multivariate Statistical Analysis

The metabolic discrimination of safflowers from various geographical origins was performed using 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy followed by principal components analysis. With a combination of these techniques, safflower samples from different origins could be discriminated using the first two principal components (PC) of the 1H NMR spectra of the 50% methanol fractions. PC1 and PC2 accounted cumulatively for 91.3% of the variation in all variables. The major peaks in the 1H NMR spectra that contributed to the discrimination were assigned to fatty acid (terminal CH3), lactic acid, acetic acid, choline derivatives, glycine, and safflower yellow derivatives. In this study, we suggest that various types of safflower can be discriminated using PCA and 1H NMR spectra.