Yoon-Jung Lee, Bum-Soo Hahn, Seong-Hoon Kim, Aejin Hwang, Hyeonseok Oh, Young-Wang Na
The genus Abelmoschus includes cultivated okra (A. esculentus) and diverse wild species and is of considerable value as an edible and medicinal resource. However, accurate species identification remains difficult due to their morphological similarity and complex taxonomic history. In this study, we compared 14 agronomic traits and the composition of eight target flavonoids in pods across 117 accessions representing seven Abelmoschus species grown under the same field conditions and evaluated their potential utility as chemotaxonomic indicators. Morphological trait analysis mainly separated the cultivated species from the wild species, but provided limited resolution among closely related or morphologically similar taxa. However, flavonoid profiling using UPLC-MS/MS revealed compositional differences that were broadly consistent with species identities in the accessions examined. In particular, hyperoside and rutin exhibited the strongest discriminatory signals among the compounds examined. Multivariate analysis further indicated that flavonoid profiles tended to separate the morphologically similar A. esculentus and A. caillei and supported the presence of three major compositional clusters across the analyzed accessions. Although the number of accessions was limited for some species, these results suggest that targeted flavonoid profiling can complement conventional morphology-based classification. These findings provide a basis for the chemotaxonomic evaluation of Abelmoschus genetic resources and may inform future breeding strategies and functional resource utilization.