Abstract:The specificity of non-volatile flavor substances in broad bean paste-meju (BBPM) fermented using different broad bean cultivars was investigated in this study. BBPM made from 11 different cultivars were used to explore differences in their compositions and contents of organic acids, fatty acids, and free amino acids through comparative analysis, partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), and sensory evaluation. The results suggest that the nutritional compositions of fermented BBPM using different cultivars of broad beans are significantly different (P<0.05). CH and QY BBPM had higher levels of organic acids (0.93~1.13 g/100 g) and free amino acids (43.18~45.65 g/kg). The organic acid (1.00 g/100 g) and fatty acid (2 808.88 μg/g) contents of TCX BBPM were relatively high. The total amounts of fatty acids in YD and SCZG BBPM were higher, but the contents of other nutrients were relatively low. The clustering in PLS-DA analysis revealed that compositions of the different BBPMs were significantly different. From the variable importance rankings, it was noted that the difference was mainly attributed to 14 compounds with VIP values greater than one, such as phenylalanine, arginine, and oxalic acid. Sensory scoring results showed that CH and QY BBPM had higher sensory scores (77.26~82.75) and therefore, better quality. In summary, our results show that the QY and CH BBPM contain more organic acids, fatty acids, and free amino acids, with higher sensory composite scores and better flavor quality. Hence, these broad bean cultivars may be preferrable in BBPM production.
