Abstract: Bamboo shoots are popular forest vegetables. Their taste quality differs among species, with obvious variation in quality before and after unearthed. Sheath leaf is an important organ, occupies the top of the sheath and is the first photosensitive part of bamboo shoots. It’s unclear whether sheath leaf causes the variation of taste quality. Here, we measured the morphological characteristics of sheath leaves and taste quality indices of bamboo shoots of 22 bamboo species from 6 genera under same site conditions and artificial interference measures, aiming to provide reference for revealing the basis of the formation of taste quality of bamboo shoots. The results showed that: (1) The variation coefficients of sheath leaf area and dry weight in 22 bamboo species were more than 88%, belonging to strong-variation indices. The variation coefficients of other morphological indices ranged from 32% to 48%, belonging to medium-variation indices. This showed that there was great variability in morphological characters of sheath leaves among different bamboo species, and there were also some differences among different forms of the same species. (2) The variation coefficients of oxalic acid, tannin, lignin contents, the content and proportion of bitter amino acids and aromatic amino acids, and the proportion of fresh taste amino acid in bamboo shoots of 22 species were more than 54%, which belonged to strong-variation indices. The variation coefficient of other taste indices- ranged from 22% to 50%, belonging to mediumvariation indices. This indicated that there were significant differences in taste quality of bamboo shoots among different bamboo species and different forms of the same species. (3) Results of redundancy analysis showed that the ratio of sheath leaf length to width and the circumference of a single leaf were positively correlated with the ratio of sugar to acid, the proportion of sweet and delicious amino acids in bamboo shoots, but negatively correlated with the contents of oxalic acid, bitter and aromatic amino acids. Leaf thickness and single leaf area were positively correlated with lignin content and negatively correlated with total acid content, while specific leaf area was negatively correlated with leaf thickness and single leaf area. Our results demonstrate that there is close relationship between the sheath leaf morphological characters and the taste quality index of bamboo shoots, and that the ratio of sheath leaf length to width, single leaf perimeter, single leaf area, thickness, and specific leaf area have crucial effects on taste quality of bamboo shoots.

Key words: bamboo shoot, sheath leaf, morphological character, taste quality, interspecific difference.