Enzymatic fingerprinting of arabinoxylan and β-glucan in triticale, barley and tritordeum grains

Enzymatic fingerprinting of arabinoxylan (AX) and β-glucan using endo-xylanase and lichenase, respectively, helps determine the structural heterogeneity between different cereals and within genotypes of the same cereal. This study characterised the structural features of AX and β-glucan in whole grains of eight triticale cultivars grown at two locations, 20 barley cultivars/lines with wide variation in composition and morphology and five tritordeum breeding lines. Principal component analysis (PCA) resulted in clear clustering of these cereals. In general, barley and tritordeum had a higher relative proportion of highly branched arabinoxylan oligosaccharides (AXOS) than triticale. Subsequent analysis of triticale revealed two clusters based on growing region along principal component (PC) 1, while PC2 explained the genetic variability and was based on mono-substitution and di-substitution in AX fragments. PCA of β-glucan features separated the three cereals based on β-glucan content. The molar ratio of trisaccharide to tetrasaccharide was 2.5–3.4 in triticale, 2.3–3.3 in barley and 2.8–3.4 in tritordeum. Barley showed a strong positive correlation (r = 0.86) between β-glucan content and relative proportion of trisaccharide. The results show that structural features of AX and β-glucan vary between and within triticale, barley and tritordeum grains which might be important determinants of end-use quality of grains.