Saskatchewan fruit growers may have something new to cheer about.
Research at the University of Saskatchewan is shining a light on the benefits of buffaloberry, chokecherry and sea buckthorn. All three native prairie fruit plants flourish throughout the province and are high in nutritional value.
As a result, the university is developing a new project to potentially use these high-value ingredients to improve food for at-risk communities in northern Saskatchewan, Canada and around the world.
The Canadian Journal of Plant Science recently released findings that identified the benefits of these fruits.
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“These were three possible candidates, or dark horses, that people had not spent a lot of time on when looking at respect to chemical composition, and I guess more importantly their commercial potential,” said study co-author Nicholas Low of the university’s food and bioproduct sciences department.
This is good news for Saskatchewan fruit growers because it further supports the development of these fruits for commercial food markets.
“There is increasing interest in the commercial development of these fruits since historically it has been thought they may provide nutritional and health benefits,” said Rick Green at POS Bio-Sciences in Saskatoon, who also helped write the study.
The study found that buffaloberry is high in ascorbic acid (vitamin C) at a level greater than four times that reported for oranges.
“There are populations around the world, and certainly even in Saskatchewan, where an orange is an expensive item or a luxury item, or a not available item,” Low said.
“So now here you have a native berry where you can get all the vitamin C that you need by consuming much less of a quantity of the material.”
Chokecherries contain markedly higher levels of anti-oxidants than the popular cranberry.
Sea buckthorn has high levels of lipids for a fruit, though the level varies with location and variety.
Potential uses for these native fruits include:
* Producing nutrient-rich ingredients for at-risk populations by blending them with Saskatchewan cereals and pulses.
* Supplementing the food value of traditionally prepared food.
* Serving as healthy snacks.
Application for funding for a major project to investigate and further develop these nutrient-rich ingredients was to be submitted to the Global Institute for Food Security earlier this month. The project will look at formulating nutrient-rich foods for at-risk populations such as infants, young children, teenagers and the aged.
“We in Saskatchewan are sitting on a great deal of commodities that are here that are rich in nutrients: cereals, legumes, fruits,” Low said.
“The idea was a group of us (scientists) tried to get together to see, can we formulate food products that would be rich in nutrients that can be used or sent to or delivered to populations that are at risk both within the province and outside the province that would contain materials that people would normally consume and can be used as an ingredient in cooking or as a whole food or whatever.”
He said the potential is there for these fruits to follow in the footsteps of the common apple, which is mass produced and taken for granted but that historically started out commercially small.
“There’s all kinds of managed groves of apples,” he said.
“Billions of tons of these are produced every year and look at all the variety of products that come out of it. That’s a possibility for these fruits as well.”
