A chemometrics approach for nuclear magnetic resonance data to characterize the partial metabolome banana peels from southern Brazil

Banana peels are well recognized as a source of important bioactive compounds, such as phenolics, carotenoids, biogenic amines, among others. As such, they have recently started to be used for industrial purposes. However, its composition seems to be strongly affected by biotic or abiotic ecological factors. Thus, this study aimed to investigate banana peels chemical composition, not only to get insights on eventual metabolic changes caused by the seasons, in southern Brazil, but also to identify the most relevant metabolites for these processes. To achieve this, a Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolic profiling strategy was adopted, followed by chemometrics analysis, using the specmine package for the R environment, and metabolite identification. The results showed that the metabolomic approach adopted allowed identifying a series of primary and secondary metabolites in the aqueous extracts investigated. Besides, over the seasons the metabolic profiles of the banana peels showed to contain biologically active compounds relevant to the skin wound healing process, indicating the biotechnological potential of that raw material.To CNPq (National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development) for financial support (Process n 407323/2013-9), to CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel), and EPAGRI (Agricultural Research and Rural Extension Company of Santa Catarina). The research fellowship from CNPq on behalf of M. Maraschin is acknowledged. The work is partially funded by Project PropMine, funded by the agreement between Portuguese FCT and Brazilian CNPq. This study was also partially supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145FEDER-006684) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 – Programa Operacional Regional do Norte.