Potential of golden potatoes to improve vitamin A and vitamin E status in developing countries

PLoS One. 2017 Nov 8;12(11):e0187102. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187102. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is the third most widely consumed plant food by humans. Its tubers are rich in starch and vitamin C, but have low or null levels of essential nutrients such as provitamin A and vitamin E. Transformation of potato with a bacterial mini-pathway for β-carotene in a tuber-specific manner results in a "golden" potato (GP) tuber phenotype resulting from accumulation of provitamin A carotenoids (α- and β-carotene) and xanthophylls. Here, we investigated the bioaccessibility of carotenoids and vitamin E as α-tocopherol (αTC) in boiled wild type and golden tubers using in vitro digestion. Golden tubers contained up to 91 μg provitamin A carotenes (PAC)/g D, increased levels of xanthophylls, phytoene and phytofluene, as well as up to 78 μg vitamin E/g DW. Cubes from wild type and GP tubers were boiled and subjected to simulated digestion to estimate bioaccessibility of carotenoids and αTC. Retention in boiled GPs exceeded 80% for β-carotene (βC), α-carotene (αC), lutein, phytoene ± and αTC, but less than 50% for phytofluene. The efficiency of partitioning of total βC, αC, E-lutein, phytoene, phytofluene and αTC in the mixed micelle fraction during small intestinal digestion was influenced by genotype, tuber content and hydrophobicity. Apical uptake of the compounds that partitioned in mixed micelles by monolayers of human intestinal Caco-2 cells during incubation for 4h was 14-20% for provitamin A and xanthophylls, 43-45% for phytoene, 23-27% for phytofluene, and 53% for αTC. These results suggest that a 150 g serving of boiled golden potatoes has the potential to contribute 42% and 23% of the daily requirement of retinol activity equivalents (RAE), as well as 34 and 17% of the daily vitamin E requirement for children and women of reproductive age, respectively.

MeSH terms

  • Biological Availability
  • Caco-2 Cells
  • Carotenoids / analysis
  • Developing Countries*
  • Humans
  • Lutein / analysis
  • Plant Tubers / chemistry
  • Solanum tuberosum / chemistry*
  • Vitamin A / analysis*
  • Vitamin E / analysis*
  • alpha-Tocopherol / analysis

Substances

  • Vitamin A
  • Vitamin E
  • Carotenoids
  • (all-E) phytoene
  • alpha-Tocopherol
  • Lutein

Grants and funding

The authors thank the Italian Ministry of Agriculture (projects ALISAL and NUTRISOL), the European Community (projects DISCO, contract n. 613513 and G2P-SOL, contract n. 677379) to GG, and benefited from the networking activities within the European Cooperation in Science and Technology Action FA1106 (Qualityfruit) and CA15136 (EUROCAROTEN) and partial support from the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center to MF. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to prepare and publish the manuscript.