Impact of leaf curl disease on capsaicinoids in mature fruits of hot pepper (Capsicum annuum) Khan M S1, Raj S K1, Upadhyay Garima2, Prakash Dhan2,* 1Molecular Virology Laboratory, National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow-226001, India. 2Nutraceutical Chemistry, National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow-226001, India. (*Corresponding author: dprakash_in@yahoo.com)
Abstract The impact of the leaf curl disease caused by a begomovirus on capsaicinoids content in diseased fruits of six cultivars of hot pepper was investigated. The amounts of capsaicin, dihydrocapsaicin and nor-dihydrocapsaicin were found invariably higher in the diseased samples as compared to the healthy. The inter-varietal variation of capsaicin in healthy fruits ranged from 0.51 to 2.25 mg/g, dihydrocapsaicin 0.31 to 2.98 mg/g and nor-dihydrocapsaicin 0.04 to 0.75 mg/g where as in diseased fruits capsaicin ranged from 1.72 to 2.67 mg/g, dihydrocapsaicin 1.09 to 3.52 mg/g and nor-dihydrocapsaicin 0.12 to 0.86 mg/g. The highest impact of virus infection was recorded in Selection–16, which showed almost a four fold increase in dihydrocapsaicin and three fold in capsaicin and nor-dihydrocapsaicin contents in the fruits as a result of disease infestation. The protein, total phenols, antioxidant and free radical scavenging activities were also found higher in the diseased fruits than that of healthy. Top Keywords Capsicum annuum, leaf curl disease, capsaicinoids, total phenols, antioxidant activity, free radical scavenging activity. Top |