Biologically active substances in persimmon cultivars bred in Nikita Botanical Gardens

Persimmon is a promising crop for industrial cultivation on the territory of the Crimean peninsula. The fruits of this culture have a high nutritional value due to the large content of vitamins, polyphenols, carotenoids, leucoanthocyanins and organic compounds of potassium, calcium, iron, copper and iodine. The unique climate of the Crimea combined with the natural fertility of its soils create conditions that allow to obtain high and stable harvests of fruit crops. Meanwhile, having different genetic origin, not all varieties of persimmons from the gene pool collection of Nikita Botanical Gardens – National Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences are suitable for introduction into industrial crop. Complex studies to determine the degree of adaptation to the conditions of growth and the ability to accumulate biologically active substances were carried out on the example of promising cultivars of persimmon bred in Nikita Gardens: ‘Mechta’, ‘Zolotistaya’, ‘Zvezdochka’, ‘Yuzhnaya Krasavitsa’. As a control, a well-known industrial cultivar ‘Hyakume’ was chosen. Analysis of the results shows that in the fruits pulp of the studied persimmon cultivars the content of dry substences varies from 26.7% (‘Yuzhnaya Krasavitsa’) to 31.9% (‘Mechta’). One of the important consumer qualities of fresh persimmon fruit is the amount of sugars. The maximum amount of sugars is in the fruits of cultivar ‘Mechta’ – 21.17%, in the other cultivars this indicator do not exceed 18.22±0.8%. During the research it was determined that the content of ascorbic acid in fruits varies from 6.07 mg % (‘Yuzhnaya Krasavitsa’) to 8.71 mg % (‘Mechta’). By the sum of phenolic compounds cultivar ‘Mechta’ is leading (563 mg %), the minimum mark was recorded for the fruits of cultivar ‘Yuzhnaya Krasavitsa’ (75 mg %). The greatest amount of biologically active substances is in the fruits of cultivar ‘Mechta’.