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Metabolism and Enzymology

Pattern of the Cyanide-Potential in Developing Fruits ¹

Implications for Plants Accumulating Cyanogenic Monoglucosides (Phaseolus lunatus) or Cyanogenic Diglucosides in Their Seeds (Linum usitatissimum, Prunus amygdalus)

University of California, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Davis, California 95616

The absolute cyanide content of developing fruits was determined in Costa Rican wild lima beans (Phaseolus lunatus), oil flax (Linum usitatissimum), and bitter almonds (Prunus amygdalus). The cyanide potential (HCN-p) of the lima bean and the almond fruit began to increase shortly after anthesis and then stopped before fruit maturity. In contrast, the flax inflorescence had a higher HCN-p in absolute terms than the mature flax fruit. At all times of its development the bean fruit contained the monoglucosides linamarin and lotaustralin. The almond and the flax fruits contained, at anthesis, the monoglucosides prunasin, and linamarin and lotaustralin, respectively, while, at maturity, only the corresponding diglucosides amygdalin, and linustatin and neolinustatin, respectively, were present.

³ Permanent address: University of Udine, Institute of Plant Defense, Piazzale Kolbe 4, I-33100 Udine, Italy.

¹ This work has been supported in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Fellowship in 1986 to M. F.) and in part by National Science Foundation grant DMB 8517190.

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