Background: Various Schisandra chinensis (SC) varieties grow in diverse regions in Korea. However, there is no valid scientific evidence of these varieties. This study aimed to select the excellent resources in terms of the growth characteristics, antioxidant activities, and analysis of the active compounds of the SC collection.
Method and Results: In total, 154 resources of SC were collected from various regions of Korea. The growth characteristics were measured by the number of fruit bunches, fruit number, and weight of 100 fruits. The antioxidant activities were investigated by analyzing the total flavonoid and total polyphenol contents and the radical scavenging activity of DPPH and ABTS. Schizandrin A, schizandrin c, gomisin a, and gomisin N were analyzed by HPLC. Each resource showed different growth characteristics. Among the antioxidative effects, the highest 20 resources showed high antioxidant activities in selected 29 resources. Analysis of the SC lignan index showed that all resources contained more than 1.16% of active compounds.
Conclusions: All of the selected 29 SC resources were shown to have excellent growth characteristics, antioxidant activities, and bioactive compound richness. Especially, SC-004, SC-007, and SC-154 showed the best growth characteristics, and SC-22, SC-40, and SC-45 showed the best antioxidant activities and bioactive compound richness.