Flavor and Health Benefits of Small Fruits

Studies have provided evidence that consumption of small fruits is beneficial to human health, which in turn has created an increased demand for these fruits. As a result, research on food and flavor quality has increased within both the horticulture and food science fields. This Symposium Series book combines the research on flavor and on the health benefits of small fruits in one volume.

Flavor of fruits is largely determined by the content and variety of the volatile compounds. One section of the book is devoted on volatiles in small fruits, and consists of chapters that discuss not only fractionation and characterization volatiles for flavor and aroma, but also discuss improvement of fruit quality through crop breeding, cultural practices, post-harvesting and processing. Another section of this book has grouped chapters that discuss various beneficial properties of berries and extracts, including antioxidant, hypolipidemic, antiviral, and tumor cell growth inhibitory effects. The last section of this book has grouped together chapters that report isolation, characterization, methods of analysis and testing of bioactivity of compounds using small organisms. The use of edible coating to enhance flavor and health effects of berry fruits is also included in this section.

The book concludes with a chapter on metabolic engineering in strawberries, the first study of its kind, which reports on manipulating secondary metabolite biosynthetic pathways leading to increased production of a specific flavan-3-ol and the discovery of a dormant biosynthetic pathway of strawberry volatiles using a transient RNA interference method.

Michael C. Qian worked for the food industry for ten years as a senior flavor chemist before joining Oregon State University as a faculty member. His research at Oregon State University is focused on aroma/flavor chemistry of small fruits, wine and wine grapes, and dairy products. He has authored more than 50 original research publications in the area of flavor chemistry.

Agnes M. Rimando is a Research Chemist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. She has over 20 years of research experience in the field of natural products chemistry. Her research projects include characterization, spectroscopic analysis, structural modification, and discovery of pharmacological actions of phenolic compounds in berries.