| Popis: |
Pollen provides floral visitors with essential nutrients including proteins, lipids, vitamins and minerals. As an important nutrient resource for pollinators, including honeybees and bumblebees, pollen quality is of growing interest in assessing available nutrition to foraging bees. To date, quantifying the protein‐bound amino acids in pollen has been difficult and methods rely on large amounts of pollen, typically more than 1 g. More usual is to estimate a crude protein value based on the nitrogen content of pollen, however, such methods provide no information on the distribution of essential and non‐essential amino acids constituting the proteins.Here, we describe a method of microwave‐assisted acid hydrolysis using low amounts of pollen that allows exploration of amino acid composition, quantified using ultra high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC), and a back calculation to estimate the crude protein content of pollen.Reliable analysis of protein‐bound and free amino acids as well as an estimation of crude protein concentration was obtained from pollen samples as low as 1 mg. Greater variation in both protein‐bound and free amino acids was found in pollen sample sizes |
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