Chestnuts are an important food crop commonly used as a food ingredient due to their nutritional properties and potential health benefits. In Korea, chestnuts have been crossbred to develop cultivars with insect resistance and high productivity, producing multiple chestnut varieties. This study classified 17 Castanea crenata cultivars produced in Korea according to origin and harvest time and determined the metabolites in chestnut kernels using 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The 17 C. crenata cultivars were divided into four groups based on their geographic origin: Korean native, Korean hybrid, Japanese native, and Japanese hybrid. The cultivars were also divided into three groups depending on their harvest period: early-ripening cultivar, mid-ripening cultivar, and late-ripening cultivar. The partial least squares-discriminant analysis score plot revealed differences among the groups. Identified metabolites, including amino acids, organic acids, and sugars, contributed to discriminating the origin and harvest time of the C. crenata chestnut kernels. Significant differences were observed, mainly in amino acids, which suggests that the composition of amino acids is one factor influenced by both the origin and harvest time of C. crenata. These results are useful to both growers and breeders because they identify the nutritional and metabolic characteristics of each C. crenata cultivar.
Keywords: 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR); chestnut (Castanea crenata); harvest time; metabolites profiling; origin.