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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Mol. Biosci.

Sec. Metabolomics

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2025.1646758

This article is part of the Research TopicV Latin American Metabolic Profiling Society (LAMPS) Symposium: 2024View all 4 articles

LC-HRMS Fingerprinting and Chemometrics for the Characterization and Classification of Lotus Cultivars from Uruguay: A Study on Phenolic Composition

Provisionally accepted
Cristina OlivaroCristina Olivaro1*Nerea NúñezNerea Núñez2Patricia BasilePatricia Basile3America MederosAmerica Mederos4Rafael ReynoRafael Reyno5Javier SaurinaJavier Saurina2Oscar NúñezOscar Núñez2
  • 1Espacio de Ciencia y Tecnología Química, CENUR Noreste, Universidad de la República., Tacuarembó, Uruguay
  • 2Department of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Chemistry, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
  • 3Espacio de Biología Vegetal del Noreste, CENUR Noreste, Universidad de la República, Tacuarembó, Uruguay
  • 4Sistema Ganadero Extensivo, Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria, Tacuarembó, Uruguay
  • 5Mejoramiento Genético y Biotecnología Vegetal y Área de Pasturas y Forrajes, Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria, Tacuarembó, Uruguay

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When defining four classes (L. uliginosus, L. corniculatus, and the two hybrids), the optimal PLS-DA model required six latent variables and achieved 100% classification accuracy, with both sensitivity and specificity reaching 100%. Additional PLS-DA models were developed to assess intra-species discrimination among the three L. uliginosus and five L. corniculatus cultivars, with varying degrees of separation observed. In each PLS-DA model, VIP loadings scores allowed the selection of the most discriminant phenolic compounds for each class under study. A total of 105 compounds, including phenolic acids, flavonols, flavan-3-ols, proanthocyanidins, and organic acids, were tentatively identified by analyzing all cultivars.

Keywords: Lotus cultivars, Classification, Identification of phenolic compounds, UHPLC-HRMS/MS, non-targeted metabolomics, chemometrics

Received: 13 Jun 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Olivaro, Núñez, Basile, Mederos, Reyno, Saurina and Núñez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Cristina Olivaro, Espacio de Ciencia y Tecnología Química, CENUR Noreste, Universidad de la República., Tacuarembó, Uruguay

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material