## 3 Results and Discussion
### Composition of Sugars and Organic Acids in Four Different Apricot Cultivars  
Sugars and organic acids are considered as important primary metabolites that are correlated to nutrition and odor of apricots. Fructose, sorbitol, glucose and sucrose were reported as the major sugars in the fresh and dried apricot samples. These sugars were also identified in this work. It was obvious that the contents of sucrose in four apricot samples were the highest (Table 2) compared to other sugars, which were 42.49, 63.02, 30.92 and 77.58 mg/g FW in DBY, LPH, YOU and XB cultivars, respectively. Previous finding also proved that sucrose was more important than fructose and glucose in five commercial apricot genotypes from India [28]. Fructose content ranged from 9.52 to 16.58  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Aparicot** & **Total Soluble** & **Tittatable** & **Total Phenolic Content** & **Total Flavonoid Content** \\
**Cultivar** & **Solids (\%)** & **Acidity (\%)** & **(mg GAE/100 g)** & **(mg RE/100 g)** \\ \hline DBY & 6.56 \(\pm\) 0.13 \({}^{\text{d}}\) & 0.34 \(\pm\) 0.02 \({}^{\text{a}}\) & 43.68 \(\pm\) 0.89 \({}^{\text{c}}\) & 28.69 \(\pm\) 2.69 \({}^{\text{c}}\) \\ LPH & 15.63 \(\pm\) 0.06 \({}^{\text{b}}\) & 0.16 \(\pm\) 0.02 \({}^{\text{b}}\) & 56.57 \(\pm\) 2.55 \({}^{\text{b}}\) & 34.85 \(\pm\) 2.54 \({}^{\text{b}}\) \\ YOU & 8.60 \(\pm\) 0.11 \({}^{\text{c}}\) & 0.36 \(\pm\) 0.01 \({}^{\text{a}}\) & 36.11 \(\pm\) 2.06 \({}^{\text{d}}\) & 22.67 \(\pm\) 3.14 \({}^{\text{d}}\) \\ XB & 15.85 \(\pm\) 0.16 \({}^{\text{a}}\) & 0.12 \(\pm\) 0.01 \({}^{\text{c}}\) & 66.36 \(\pm\) 0.23 \({}^{\text{a}}\) & 45.57 \(\pm\) 0.63 \({}^{\text{a}}\) \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}  
* The different superscripts in the column mean significant differences (\(p<0.05\), Duncan’s test) for different apricot cultivars. Values are presented as mean \(\pm\) standard deviation (\(n=3\)). DBY, Daabiyou apricot; LPH, Luopuhongdaike apricot; YOU, You apricot; XB, Xiaobai apricot.  
\end{table}
Table 1: Fundamental physicochemical properties in four different apricot cultivars.  
mg/g FW in the four apricot varieties. XB apricots had the maximum sorbitol content (11.04 mg/g FW), followed by LPH (10.43 mg/g FW), YOU (6.27 mg/g FW) and DBY apricots (4.47 mg/g FW). For glucose, the content in DBY, LPH, YOU and XB apricots was 12.18, 24.82, 13.44 and 28.89 mg/g FW, respectively.  
Malic acid was found to be the predominant organic acid in Malatya apricot varieties [29]. This result was also found in this study. Malic acid is considered the main organic acid and showed a significant difference (\(p<0.05\)) in the four apricot cultivars (Table 3). The highest concentration of malic acid was determined in XB apricots, followed by YOU, DBY and LPH apricots (1077.98, 616.74, 245.63 and 104.59 mg/100g FW, respectively). For quinic acid, XB apricots showed the highest level (193.21 mg/100g FW) and DBY apricots had the lowest content (49.58 mg/100g FW). The content of ascorbic acid varied from 38.20 to 7.73 mg per 100g FW in XB and LPH apricots, respectively. The citric acid concentration in DBY and XB apricots was higher than in YOU and LPH apricots (241.26, 233.75, 186.45 and 91.82 mg/100g FW, respectively). Previous work also reported a similar result [30]. The content of succinic acid in YOU, XB, LPH and DBY apricots accounted for 9.74, 8.27, 6.35 and 5.37 mg/100g FW, respectively. The content of sugars and organic acids also varied with the maturity of apricot. Sugar content increased while organic acid content decreased from commercial ripe to tree ripe stages [31].