Physicochemical, morphological, structural, and thermal characteristics of starches separated from Bulbus fritillaria of different cultivars

The starches studied from the nine Fritillaria species had differently shaped and sized granules but all of them showed the presence of smooth, round, or elliptic-shaped, indicating that the isolation process did not destroyed the starch granules. The nine Fritillaria starches presented different AM content, moisture content, ash content, particle size, swelling power, solubility, water absorption capacity and light transmittance. The starches isolated from Chuan-Beimu species exhibited a higher amount of crude protein content and lower amount of AM than other the groups, which had lower swelling power, higher solubility and light transmittance. All the nine Fritillaria starches had an XRD pattern of the B-type. In addition, F. hupehensis, F. walujewii and F. ussuriensis starches with fairly large-sized or irregular granules had higher Tp and ?Hgel values than that isolated from the four Chuan-Beimu species. The results obtained yielded information about the possible behavior of these starches when being used in certain applications. Cluster analysis results showed that this classification method based on macromolecule chemical compounds (starch) is original and credible in the quality control of various Beimu. In addition, it provided more information to the authentication systematics taxonomy methods including morphological, histological and molecular biological techniques of Fritillaria species.