Minor Fruits: Nutritional Composition, Bioactive Potential, and Their Food Applications

Minor fruits are often recognized as "poor man's crops" and include neglected, underutilized, and some rare fruits that can contribute high nutritional, medicinal, and antioxidant properties that are useful for health and curing many diseases. This book, Minor Fruits: Nutritional Composition, Bioactive Potential, and Their Food Applications, highlights the potential of minor fruits in the human diet and their health benefits due to presence of the rich source of phytochemicals, fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

The book is unique in that it provides a full-length study of several minor fruits and their nutritional and bioactive potential, general characteristics, and opportunities for their use in various functional food products. It also provides an overview of the postharvest techniques used for minor fruits to preserve quality, enhance shelf life, streamline fruit processing, and develop new value-added products. It also provides knowledge on the proper utilization of minor fruits in meeting the demand for food and nutritional security challenges growing worldwide by offering a promising alternative source of fruit and fruit-based products with health benefits.

Important features of the book include:

• Highlights the importance of minor fruits in terms of nutrition and their role in combating malnutrition
• Provides knowledge regarding the major minor fruits and their biodiversity
• Details bioactive compounds of minor fruits and their health benefits
• Looks at the role of minor fruits in combating diet-related diseases
• Discusses minor fruit-based food products and their nutraceutical potentials

This book is a comprehensive reference written for teachers, scientists, researchers, students, and others with an interest in minor fruits and their use in fruit processing, value addition, byproducts, and their utilization for combating malnutrition and nutritional security.