Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of producing area and appearance quality on lignan contents of sesame seeds to provide a theoretical basis for genetic improvement of sesame seed quality and producing sesame production with high lignan content.Two hundred and twelve typical sesame cultivars/lines, chosen from more than 3 800 accessions of sesame germplasm resources, were simultaneously grown in 4 different ecological zones.And the sesamin, sesamolin content, kilo-seed weight and seed-coat color of the 212 seed samples yielded in each area were measured.And the relationships between sesamin and sesamolin content with producing area, kilo-seed weight and seed coat color were analyzed.The average contents of sesamin and sesamolin of four producing areas were 3.52, 3.61, 3.11, 2.43, 1.94, 1.93, 1.78, 1.62 mg/g, respectively.There exists the tendency of increasing lignan contents of sesame seeds with the rising of yielding area latitudes.Furthermore, an extremely significantly positive correlation was found between seed-coat color L value and sesamin contents(r=0.296 6, ɑ =0.01)and no significant correlation was found between seed-coat color L value and sesamolin;an extremely significantly negative correlation was found between kilo-seed weight and sesamin contents(r=-0.260 3, ɑ =0.01) and a significantly positive correlation was found between kilo-seed weight and sesamolin contents(r=0.227 9, ɑ =0.01).The sesamin and sesamolin contents rose gradually with the increase of yielding area latitudes.With the darkening of the seed-coat color from white to black, sesamin content was gradually increased.With the increasing of kilo-seed weight, the sesamin content was gradually decreased, and the sesamolin content gradually increased.

Key words: Sesame, Sesamin, Sesamolin, Producing area, Kilo-seed weight, Seed-coat color

CLC Number: 

• S565.03