What an economically interesting palm this is ! Corozo de Lata (Bactris guineensis: Family: Arecaceae) or just Corozo, uvita de lata, coyol is a wild palm growing up to 15 feet in tropical regions of Central and South America and about 200m to 1,500 metres above sea level. It isn’t that well known but it has potential as a food source as was identified in a report I’d written on South American fruits a few years ago.  Like many plant products with a nutritional purpose, the fruits are in this case boiled and the tea consumed as a refreshing drink. It is also turned into candies, sweets, confectionary, jams even some  alcoholic liqueurs.

The fruit of this palm is a drupe of 2 to 6 cm length and red to purple – almost blue ! The interior has a black seed surrounded by a fibrous pulp which tastes sour.   It is rich in anthocyanins containing mainly cyanidin-3-glucoside (88%), peonidin-3-rutinoside, peonidin-3-glucoside, cyanidin-3-(6-O-malonyl) glucoside, and cyanidin-3-sambubioside. The Universidade Nacional de Colombia conducted research into microencapsulation of spray-dried anthocyanins extracted from the fruit as potential food and beverage colours (Osorio et al., 2010). Anthocyanins are relatively stable in this format so there is commercial potential there as well as antioxidant potential. A more recent paper from the same group has examined this latter property using EPR (electron paramagnetic spectroscopy) spectroscopy

It is currently a personal project of mine – all welcome to enquire about the fruit and the opportunities presented as it could be a natural blue colourant.

References

Osorio, C., Acevedo, B., Hillebrand, S., Carriazo, J., Winterhalter, P. & Morales, A.L. (2010). Microencapsulation by spray drying of anthocyanin pigments from corozo (Bactris guineensis) fruit. J.Agric. Food Chem., 58, pp. 6977–6985.

Osorio, C., Carriazo, Josè G., Almanza, O. (2011) Antioxidant activity of corozo (Bactris guneensis) fruit by electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. Eur. Food Res. and Technol, 233, (1) p. 103-108. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/s00217-011-1499-4