The purpose of this study was to investigate the contents of apigenin and luteolin in vegetables mainly distributed and consumed in Korea. In this study, the contents of apigenin, apigenin-7-O-glucoside, luteolin, and luteolin-7-O-glucoside in vegetables were surveyed by using liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). According to the analysis of 27 items (91 samples) in vegetables, the content of total apigenin (the sum of apigenin and apigenin-7-O-glucoside) was quantified in 8 out of the 27 items in vegetables, followed by pepper leaves, parsley, celery, chamnamul, foremost mugwort, and perilla leaves. The content of total luteolin (the sum of luteolin and luteolin-7-O-glucoside) was found in 11 of the 27 items in vegetables, followed by pepper leaves, dandelion, celery, red lettuce, foremost mugwort, and perilla leaves. Celery was divided into stalks and leaves for comparing the contents of apigenin and luteolin. Celery showed higher contents of apigenin and luteolin in leaves than in stalks.

Perilla frutescens, which belonging to the Labiatae family, is widely cultivated oil crop and have been used traditional herbal medicine in East Asia such as Korea, China, and Japan. Especially, the leaves and the seeds of this species are important in Korean traditional cooking, as one of the popular garnish and food colorants. Numerous studies have revealed that the beneficial health effects of perilla are due to its several phytochemicals contents, such as rosmarinic acid, caffeic acid, luteolin, and apigenin. For this reason, increasing the content of phytochemicals in perilla hasbecome a major breeding objective. The genetic diversity of the rosmarinic acid, caffeic acid, luteolin, and apigenin content in perilla seed is poorly documented. We analyzed the rosmarinic acid, caffeic acid, luteolin, and apigenin content of 203 accessions of perilla germplasm by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The rosmarinic acid and luteolin contents ofgermplasms were ranged from 15.7 μg/g to 2717.1 μg/g and from 1.6 μg/g to 582.4 μg/g respectively.