Abstract: In order to correlate the changes in amino acid content with nutritional value and flavor quality during the ripening process of olive fruit, we applied high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry to quantitatively analyze the contents of free and hydrolytic amino acids in the olive cultivars ‘Changying’ and ‘Qinglan 1 hao’. The results showed that a total of 16 hydrolytic amino acids were detected in each cultivar, including 7 essential amino acids and 9 non-essential ones. However, the contents of total hydrolytic amino acids in the two cultivars were different; ‘Changying’ olives showed an increase-decrease-increase trend, while ‘Qinglan 1 hao’ olives presented a decrease-increase-decrease-increase trend. The cultivars were undesirable in terms of ratio of amino acid (RAA), ratio coefficient (RC) and score of ratio coefficient (SRC), leading to nutritional imbalance. The total free amino acid content in ‘Changying’ olives exhibited an increase-decrease-increase-decrease trend, whereas the opposite was observed for ‘Qinglan 1 hao’ olives. Each cultivar contained 19 free amino acids, with sweet and umami amino acids being the major ones, and sweet (Gln) and umami (Glu, Asp, and Asn) amino acids made a substantially greater contribution to ‘Qinglan 1 hao’ olives than to ‘Changying’ olives. Thus, the ‘Qinglan 1 hao’ cultivar had better sweet and umami flavor than the ‘Changying’ cultivar. The results from this study provide a basis for judging the flavor of olives.

Key words: Canarium album, high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, hydrolytic amino acid, free amino acid