Amino Acid Content of Some Species from Trigonella L. Genus Collected from Turkey

A study was undertaken to evaluate the amino acid composition of the seeds of Trigonella cylindracea Desv., Trigonella mesopotamica Hub.-Mor. and Trigonella smyrnea Boiss. which are growing wild in Turkey. The seeds of three species contain both essential (histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, valine, arginine, and tryptophan) and non-essential (alanine, aspartic acid, glycine, glutamic acid, proline, serine, and tyrosine) amino acids. The major amino acid was glutamic acid with a value of 4819 mg/100 g (T. cylindracea), 5888 mg/100 g (T. mesopotamica) and 4146 mg/100 g (T. smyrnea). Among the essential amino acids, lysine is found at the highest rate in all three species. The highest amount of lysine was found in the seeds of T. mesopotamica, followed by the seeds of T. cylindracea and T. smyrnea (3352±0.02 mg/100 g, 3059±0.03 mg/100 g and 2947±0.04 mg/100 g, respectively). The literature review showed that the amino acid composition of the studied seeds were evaluated for the first time in this study, therefore; our study provides important preliminary data to the literature in terms of evaluating the chemical compositions of three Trigonella species.