Having high antioxidant levels can make a fruit a hot product for health-conscious consumers.
That’s led tomato juice makers to advertise the lycopene content of their product and caused the creation of high antioxidant super-broccoli and super-tomatoes in the United Kingdom.
So what are the antioxidant values for Manitoba-grown saskatoons, blueberries, chokecherries, sea buckthorn, raspberries and strawberries?
Right now, no one can say.
It’s something two researchers at the University of Manitoba want to change.
“We want to give Manitoba fruit growers an added edge,” said
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Arnie Hydamaka, a food processing researcher.
“There’s been a major push on internationally because of the potential nutraceutical value (of fruits) … but the data is like a ouija board, with numbers going all over the place. The data you can find in the (scientific) literature is quite different variety to variety, region to region (for the same fruits).
“We want to develop a database for Manitoba.”
Hydamaka and professor Trust Beta have begun researching the nutritional and nutraceutical content of six Manitoba-grown fruits, trying to find out how much antioxidant value is in each fruit and what specific organic compounds in each gives it its antioxidant value.
“One might be higher in one type of polyphenol and the other higher in another type of polyphenol,” said Beta, who is one of the researchers involved with the Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals.
“When we analyze the chemical components which are contributing to the antioxidant activity, that’s where we get many surprises.”
Most of their present work wouldn’t be possible without world-class technology that they’ve been able to get through funding from the federal Agri-Food Research and Development Initiative and Manitoba fruit growers.
The technology allows Hydamaka and Beta to break down various prairie crops and analyze them by the same standards that are used internationally, and that allow fruit-to-fruit comparison.
“It’s the standard measurement,” said Hydamaka.
The prairie fruit industry is underdeveloped, with few commercial processors and few high volume products being made by producers.
Hydamaka hopes that will change once farmers are better able to promote prairie fruit products with solid scientific data.
Right now, producers and processors have to rely on people’s good feelings about these fruits when they are trying to sell into the market.
“For any producer or processor who goes to value added, we need to get the nutritional labelling up to date on what these Manitoba fruits have,” said Hydamaka.
Prairie potential
There’s no reason to believe prairie fruits couldn’t find major markets. For instance, until a few years ago, pomegranates were a low profile fruit.
Now a pomegranate juice industry has sprung up in the United Kingdom and in California because of consumer demand for new, healthy products.
Once researchers start looking at neglected crops, there’s no telling what unexpected properties might appear, Beta said.
She was shocked to see data that revealed that some mushrooms contained higher levels of some antioxidants than other much more highly lauded vegetables.
“Mushrooms? I hadn’t thought that much of them before, honestly,” she said with a laugh.
Hydamaka said the potential for this kind of research goes from marketing to selection to variety development.
“We could be breeding for antioxidant values, not just disease resistance,” he said.
