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Elder berries and flowers collected at the foothill were characterised by the lowest levels of both beneficial (phenolics) and harmful compounds (CGG) and are suitable for moderate consumption. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.

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These results showed that the drying process improved the quality of persimmon products and extended their shelf life. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry.

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Honeysuckle berries are becoming an attractive organically grown fruit with many aspects as a new functional food. They have the benefit of containing health-promoting compounds, such as saponins, ascorbic acid, iridoids, flavonoids, and anthocyanins. Fruit berries can be processed into many products with various contents of selected bioactive compounds. The contents of individual compounds were identified with the aid of high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrophotometry. Their concentrations significantly differed among the various food products. Ascorbic acid had the highest values in blue honeysuckle spread (302.02 mg/100 g of dry weight), while infusion (119.17 mg/100 g) and juice (118.17 mg/100 g) had the lowest values. All the food products had low sugar contents. Of the health beneficial phenolic compounds honeysuckle spread had the highest content (1753.54 mg/100 g) and honeysuckle infusion (196.61 mg/100 g) had the lowest content. Honeysuckle liqueur and smoothie also had high total analyzed phenolic contents (1138.75 mg/100 g and 1108.25 mg/100 g, respectively).

Medicinal plants are widely used for the relief of disease symptoms or as dietary supplements. In recent decades, purple coneflower has become extremely well known. An infusion or tincture of purple coneflower can be prepared by anyone simply, inexpensively, and ecologically safely. Three plant parts of purple coneflower were used in the study: extracts from roots, flowers, and leaves were obtained using three different solvents (100% and 40% ethanol and water). High-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrophotometer identified and quantified 23 individual phenolics. Pure (100%) ethanol gave the lowest yield of all the investigated phenolic compounds in all herb parts. Chicoric and caftaric acids were the major phenolic compounds in coneflower. Caftaric acid, with health promoting properties, was extracted best in a water solution from purple coneflower leaves (2673.31 mg/100 g dry weight [DW]) and chicoric acid, also with a beneficial effect on human health, yielded the highest levels in 40% ethanol solution from flowers (1571.79 mg/100 g DW) and roots (1396.27 mg/100 g DW).

The contents of bioactive substances were influenced by various environmental factors such as temperature, UV radiation, altitude, light intensity and fruit ripening stage. Different compounds respond distinctly to different environmental factors. © 2017 Society of Chemical Industry.