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Cranberries are a favorite fruit
and I have found many ways to add it into my family's diet.
There are so many tasty ways to add their goodness and I like
the fact the USDA is working to make the berry even more
powerful. Even better, this is a traditional hybrid
marriage between our much loved variety and one from Alaska.
The goodness just keeps growing. Along with the full
story from ARS below, I found this recipe from
Ocean Spray
for
CRAISINS®
CRUNCH BREAKFAST BOWL.
Enjoy.
ARS scientists
and colleagues are suiting up a wholesome cranberry variety
with a newly isolated genetic trait. Using traditional
breeding methods, they have created an experimental cranberry
line with a high level of absorbable antioxidants.
Plant pathologist James J. Polashock,
with the ARS Fruit Laboratory, and Nicholi Vorsa, with the
Philip E. Marucci Center for Blueberry and Cranberry Research
and Extension at Rutgers University, collaborated on the
project. Both scientists are located at the center in
Chatsworth, New Jersey.
The cultivated, typical American
cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon, has long been prized
for its brilliant red fruit. The deep-colored pigments are
made up of anthocyanins, which are a subclass of flavonoids.
The many plant chemicals in this large group are widely
studied for their purported health benefits, including their
role as antioxidants.
The researchers found that a cranberry
species from Alaska, Vaccinium oxycoccus, is
genetically similar enough to the American cranberry to enable
interspecies hybridization, producing fertile progeny. The
Alaskan species is attractive to the breeders because its
fruit anthocyanins are mostly linked to glucose.
Here’s why that’s good.
In nature, anthocyanins are mostly
bound to sugars. Anthocyanins that are bound to the sugar
glucose are very high in antioxidant capacity. And flavonoids
bound to glucose have been found to be more readily absorbed
in the human gut.
But the anthocyanins found in the
American cranberry are bound mainly to other, less-absorbable
sugars, namely galactose and arabinose. Generally, less than 5
percent of the anthocyanins in the typical cranberry are
glucose linked, according to Polashock.
By crossing the American and Alaskan
species, researchers have created a cranberry with high levels
of more bioavailable antioxidants.
“The progeny of these crosses also
deliver the proanthocyanidins known for inhibiting E. coli
from adhering to the lining of the bladder and causing
urinary tract infections,” says Polashock.
The first-generation hybrids contained
up to 50 percent anthocyanin linked to glucose. Through
backcrossing, the researchers have now produced progeny that
also offer good productivity, vigor, and adaptation. The next
step is to produce a horticulturally acceptable cultivar for
growers to use.—By
Rosalie Marion Bliss,
Agricultural Research Service Information Staff.
James Polashock is
with the USDA-ARS
Fruit Laboratory,
125A Lake Oswego Rd., Chatsworth, NJ 08019; phone (609)
726-1590, ext. 4423, fax (609) 726-1593.
Related Recipe
CRAISINS®
CRUNCH BREAKFAST BOWL
Cooking Good
in Greene Main Index |
