Effect of cold arid high-altitude environment on bioactive phytochemical compounds of organically grown Brassicaceae vegetables for nutri-health security in mountainous regions

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 15976 - 14
• Main Authors: Shukla, Shardulya, Kumar, Nitish, Bhardwaj, Pushpender, Pandita, Priyanka, Patel, Manoj Kumar, Thakur, Mohan Singh, Kumar, Raj, Rawat, Monisha, Saxena, Shweta
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 10-07-2024; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/158; 631/1647; 631/449; 631/45; Acclimatization; Altitude; Animal manures; Antioxidant; Antioxidants; Antioxidants - analysis; Azotobacter; Brassica oleracea; Brassicaceae; Brassicaceae - chemistry; Cold Temperature; Environmental conditions; Flavonoids; Functional foods & nutraceuticals; Health promotion; High-altitude environments; High-performance liquid chromatography; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Indole-3-carbinol; Kaempferol; Liquid chromatography; Mountain regions; multidisciplinary; Organic farming; Phenolic compounds; Phenols; Phenols - analysis; Phytochemical compounds; Phytochemicals; Phytochemicals - analysis; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Secondary metabolites; Sulforaphane; Vegetables; Vegetables - chemistry; Secondary metabolites; Organic farming; Brassicaceae; Antioxidant; Phytochemical compounds
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-64926-4

High-altitude (HA) environment presents immense physiological adversities for humans that have been overcome by supplementing bio-active phytochemicals from functional foods that support and accelerate acclimatization under these extreme environmental conditions. Several agricultural interventions have been investigated to enhance the phytochemical content in vegetables however; these studies have been limited to low-altitude (LA) regions only. In view of an existing knowledge gap, current work is designed to compare the phytochemical compositions of HA and LA-grown Brassicaceae vegetables (cabbage, cauliflower, knol-khol, and radish) using organic treatments via farm yard manure (FYM) and
Azotobacter
. The open field study was conducted as a two-factorial randomized block design. The first factor was treatment (T
1
-FYM, T
2
-
Azotobacter
, T
3
-FYM + 
Azotobacter
, and T
4
-control) while the second was locations (HA and LA). Among all these treatments, the application of treatment T
3
in HA-grown cabbage showed the highest total phenolic content (TPC; 9.56 μg/mg), total flavonoids content (TFC; 14.48 μg/mg), and antioxidant potential using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH; 85.97%) and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP; 30.77 μg/mg) compared to LA grown samples. Reverse Phase high performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) analysis showed that treatment T
3
at HA led to significantly high kaempferol (0.92 μg/mg) and sulforaphane (8.94 μg/mg) contents in cabbage whereas, indole-3-carbinol (1.31 μg/mg) was higher in HA grown cauliflower. The present study provides scientific evidence for the enrichment of health-promoting phytochemical compounds in Brassicaceae vegetables grown with T
3
treatment specifically at HA.