Strawberry fruits contain phenolic compounds that exhibit antioxidant, anticancer, antiatherosclerotic, antinflammatory and anti-neurodegenerative properties. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled to electrospray ionization mass spectrometric (ESI-MS) detection in the positive and negative ion mode has been used to identify the phenolic compounds in extracts from sixteen different strawberry cultivar fruits from Republic of Macedonia. Photodiode-array detection (DAD) has been used for screening of the different classes of phenolic compounds, whereas MS and MSn fragmentation data were employed for their structural characterization. The phenolic compounds identified were grouped as: ellagic acid and ellagic acid conjugates with sugars, ellagitannins, anthocyanins, flavonols, flavanols, and acylated sugars (feruloyl, caffeoyl and coumaroyl hexoses). Quercetin and kaempferol were the major flavonols found as quercetin 3-O-glucoside, quercetin 3-O-glucuronide, kaempferol 3-O-glucoside, kaempferol 3-O-glucoronide, kaempferol 3-O-malonylglucoside, kaempferol 3-O-acetylglucoside and kaempferol 3-O-coumaroylglucoside. Pelargonidin-3-O-glucoside was the most abundant anthocyanin in all strawberry extracts. Proanthocyanidins were also identified by MSn fragmentation as dimers, trimers and tetramers of (epi)catechin and (epi)afzelechin. This is the first assay of the phenolic profile of the strawberry cultivars in Macedonia, which can be further developed for characterization and evaluation of their quality with regards to their phenolic composition.

Wines and grapes contain a large array of phenolic compounds belonging to non-flavonoids and flavonoids. This study evaluates the polyphenolic contents of six commercial red and white Macedonian wines and four grape varieties. Spectrophotometric methods were applied for the determination of the total phenolics, the total flavonoids, the total anthocyanins and the total catechins. The efficiency of acetone/water (80/20) and methanol/water (80/20) solutions for the extraction of polyphenols from grape pulp, seeds and skins were compared. The best extraction efficiency was achieved using acetone/ water. The obtained results showed that Macedonian grapes are rich in polyphenols, whereby the highest concentration of total phenolics was found for Vranec grapes. The analyzed wines contained high contents of polyphenol; the highest contents were found for Disan wine produced from the Vranec variety of grapes (1515 mg/L total phenolics, 1103 mg/L total flavonoids, 237 mg/L total anthocyanins and 845 mg/L total catechins). Principal component analysis was employed to check possible groupings of the studied red and white wine samples. A clear separation of white wines from red ones was observed.