Principal component analysis and comprehensive evaluation of free amino acids in different varieties of kiwi fruit

Objective: To analyze differences and evaluate the overall quality of free amino acids among different varieties of kiwi fruit.Methods: The contents of free amino acids were measured by automatic amino acid analyzer, and then principal component analysis ( PCA) was used to extract the principal component and comprehensive evaluation.Results: All of the ten varieties contain seventeen kinds of free amino acids; the largest total content of free amino acids, 22.739g /kg, was Jin Tao kiwi fruit, while the least, 14.443g /kg, was Hayward kiwi fruit produced from New Zealand.Free amino acids from those samples were classified into three principal components.Moreover, comprehensive evaluation showed that Jin Tao, Xu Xiang and Jin Xiang kiwi fruit had a better quality.Conclusions:PCA could be performed to analyze the overall quality of free amino acids in diverse varieties of kiwi fruit effectively.