# Effect of Plant Biostimulants on Nutritional and Chemical Profiles of Almond and Hazelnut
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Linear Discriminant Analysis
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Biostimulant** & \(\alpha\)**-Tocopherol** & \(\beta\)**-Tocopherol** & \(\gamma\)**-Tocopherol** & **Tocopherols** \\ \hline \multicolumn{5}{c}{Almond (Vairo cultivar)} \\ \hline Control & 46 \(\pm\) 1.0 b  & 0.8 \(\pm\) 0.1 ab  & 3.6 \(\pm\) 0.3 b  & 50 \(\pm\) 1.1 b  \\ Phytoalgae & 49 \(\pm\) 2.7 a  & 0.8 \(\pm\) 0.1 a  & 4.4 \(\pm\) 0.2 a  & 55 \(\pm\) 3.1 a  \\ Tradebor® & 43 \(\pm\) 1.6 c  & 0.6 \(\pm\) 0.1 c  & 3.1 \(\pm\) 0.2 d  & 47 \(\pm\) 2.5 c  \\ Sprint Plus® & 45 \(\pm\) 3.0 b  & 0.8 \(\pm\) 0.1 b  & 3.5 \(\pm\) 0.2 c  & 49 \(\pm\) 3.0 b  \\ Neobor® & 41 \(\pm\) 1.0 d  & 0.8 \(\pm\) 0.1 b  & 3.6 \(\pm\) 0.2 b  & 46 \(\pm\) 1.0 c  \\ \hline ANOVA \(p\)-value & & & & & \\ (n = 45) 1  & \textless{}0.001 & \textless{}0.001 & \textless{}0.001 & \textless{}0.001 \\ \hline \multicolumn{5}{c}{Hazelnut (Ennis cultivar)} \\ \hline Control & 22 \(\pm\) 1.5 c  & 0.57 \(\pm\) 0.03 e  & 0.75 \(\pm\) 0.02 d  & 23 \(\pm\) 1.5 c  \\ NPK & 22 \(\pm\) 2.0 c  & 0.72 \(\pm\) 0.03 c  & 0.83 \(\pm\) 0.05 ab  & 24 \(\pm\) 2.1 c  \\ NPK + phytoalgae & 26 \(\pm\) 1.1 a  & 0.76 \(\pm\) 0.05 b  & 0.79 \(\pm\) 0.05 c  & 28 \(\pm\) 1.2 a  \\ Sprint Plus® & 26 \(\pm\) 2.2 a  & 0.88 \(\pm\) 0.03 a  & 0.84 \(\pm\) 0.03 ab  & 27 \(\pm\) 2.2 a  \\ NPK + Sprint Plus® & 24 \(\pm\) 0.6 b  & 0.67 \(\pm\) 0.03 d  & 0.80 \(\pm\) 0.05 bc  & 26 \(\pm\) 0.7 b  \\ Phytoalgae & 22 \(\pm\) 1.4 c  & 0.74 \(\pm\) 0.04 bc  & 0.87 \(\pm\) 0.04 a  & 24 \(\pm\) 1.4 c  \\ \hline ANOVA \(p\)-value & & & & & \\ (n = 54) 1  & \textless{}0.001 & \textless{}0.001 & \textless{}0.001 & \textless{}0.001 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}  
* If \(p<0.050\), the corresponding parameter presented a significantly different value for at least one biostimulant; different letters indicate significantly different values. fw—fresh weight. Results are presented as mean \(\pm\) standard deviation.  
\end{table} 
Table 3: Tocopherols profile (mg/100 g fw) for almond and hazelnut cultivars submitted to different plant biostimulants treatments. In hazelnut's case, the first three discriminant functions (Figure 2) included 89.3% (function 1:49.6%; function 2:28.5%; function 3:11.2%) of the observed variance. In this second LDA, the variables selected as having discriminant ability were water, \(\beta\)-tocopherol, C18:0, sucrose, protein, C18:1n9c, \(\alpha\)-tocopherol, ash, \(\gamma\)-tocopherol, C18:2n6c, and energy. Function 1 was mainly correlated with C18:2n6c (lowest percentage in control samples) and C18:1n9c (highest percentage in control samples), clearly separating the markers corresponding to control samples from all others obtained from trees grown in soils supplemented with any kind of biostimulants. Function 2, on its side, was more correlated with C18:0 and \(\beta\)-tocopherol, placing markers corresponding to samples treated with Sprint Plus (the ones showing highest contents of C18:0 and \(\beta\)-tocopherol) in the positive side of the corresponding axis. Function 3 had higher correlations coefficients with sucrose, \(\alpha\)-tocopherol, and total tocopherols, variables that reached the highest contents in samples treated with NPK + phytoalgae, thereby the ones that separated better (positive side of the axis). Generally, these results showed that the treatment with biostimulants is effective to increment the percentage of linoleic acid (particularly when using NPK); likewise, the tocopherols levels were also increased, with maximum expression when using NPK + phytoalgae. In this first LDA, the classification performance was 100% accurate, either for the original grouped cases, as well as for the cross-validated grouped ones. Figure 1: Spatial distribution of almond crop biostimulant markers according to the discriminant functions coefficients. Function 1 accounted for 68.3% of the variation, function 2 accounted for 24.1%, while function 3 accounted for 6.1%.