In the present report, the effects of blanching, steaming, and high temperature/high pressure processing (HTHP) on the amino acid contents of commonly consumed Korean root vegetables, leaf vegetables, and pulses were evaluated using an Automatic Amino Acid Analyzer. The total amino acid content of the samples tested was between 3.38 g/100 g dry weight (DW) and 21.32 g/100 g DW in raw vegetables and between 29.36 g/100 g DW and 30.55 g/100 g DW in raw pulses. With HTHP, we observed significant decreases in the lysine and arginine contents of vegetables and the lysine, arginine, and cysteine contents of pulses. Moreover, the amino acid contents of blanched vegetables and steamed pulses were more similar than the amino acid contents of the HTHP vegetables and HTHP pulses. Interestingly, lysine, arginine, and cysteine were more sensitive to HTHP than the other amino acids. Partial Least Squares-Discriminate Analyses were also performed to discriminate the clusters and patterns of amino acids.
Keywords: Automatic Amino Acid Analyzer; amino acids; partial least squares-discriminate analysis (PLS-DA); pulses; vegetables.