Correspondence analysis of antioxidant activity and UV–Vis absorbance of Maillard reaction products as related to reactants

Abstract

In this study, the antioxidant activity (including ABTS radical scavenging activity and reducing power) and UV–Vis spectra of Maillard reaction products (MRPs) prepared from four sugars (glucose/fructose/xylose/ribose) and twenty amino acids were studied. The effects of reactants on the antioxidant activity and UV–Vis absorbance of MRPs were investigated using correspondence analysis, which revealed that MRPs from fructose-amino acid models showed the similar UV–Vis absorbance and antioxidant activity with MRPs from glucose-amino acid models, MRPs from ribose-amino acid models showed the similar UV–Vis absorbance and antioxidant activity with MRPs from xylose-amino acid models, while there was significant difference between MRPs from hexose (glucose and fructose)-amino acid models and MRPs from pentose (ribose and xylose)-amino acid models, especially for methionine and valine. The correlation analysis demonstrated that ABTS radical scavenging activity showed the highest linearity (r = 0.831) with UV absorbance at 280 nm while reducing power showed the highest linearity (r = 0.689) with UV absorbance at 355 nm, indicating that different antioxidant properties of MRPs might derive from different compounds. Besides, as compared with cysteine, tyrosine and tryptophan showed a certain ABTS radical scavenging activity in spite of little reducing power.