Chemometric studies of chemical compounds in five cultivars of potatoes from Tenerife

A statistical study of correlation and multivariate analysis on the chemical composition of five cultivars of potatoes harvested in Tenerife was carried out to establish the relationships between the chemical compounds and, therefore, to differentiate the samples according to traditional and recent importation potatoes, cultivars, and species/subspecies. A large number of significant correlations between the chemical compounds were found, which suggests biochemical relationships among them. After factor analysis, the dimension space was reduced from 24 variables to eight factors, accounting for 77.2% of the total variance. Starch, moisture, organic acids, and metals are the variables that make it possible to characterize the system without losing very much information. Total differentiation of potato samples according to the criteria species/subspecies and cultivars was obtained using discriminant analysis with all the variables. However, with only four variables (weight of tuber, starch, amylose, and glucose + fructose) it is possible to differentiate between the traditional and recent importation potatoes.