Identification of Geographical Origins for Blackcurrant Cultivars Based on Amino Acid Compositions

In this study, a total of 36 blackcurrant（Ribes nigrum L.） cultivars grown in the Northeast of China were selected, including 12 cultivars introduced from Russia, 10 from Poland and the rest from local areas. The physicochemical properties and amino acid compositions of these varieties were studied, and the geographical origins of blackcurrants were tracked by multivariate statistical analysis. A total of 23 amino acids were detected in all cultivars, which were rich in glutamine, glutamate, aspartate, asparagine, α-alanine, γ-aminobutyric acid, valine and serine. The content of the total amino acids in these cultivars was from 31.21 mg · 100 g^-1 to319.40 mg · 100 g^-1. Stepwise linear discriminant analysis（SLDA） was introduced to perform satisfactory categorization for blackcurrant cultivars, which achieved a success rate of 88.9% for the identification of geographical origins. These results suggested that the compositions of amino acids in blackcurrants could effectively predict geographical origins.