Proximate composition of carob cultivars growing in South Africa

Abstract

Five carob (Ceratonia siliqua L.) cultivars grown in South Africa were analysed for proximate and polyphenol composition as well as for mineral, amino and fatty acid content. Carob pods from the five cultivars were obtained from two locations in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. The average proximate composition (determined using standardised methods) range of raw carob pods was: 8.17 -9.56% moisture; 40.69 -54.74% sugars; 29.88 -36.07% dietary fibre; 3.07 -4.42% protein; 2.58 -3.08% polyphenols; 0.45 -0.86% fat; and 2.13 -2.69% ash. A total of 17 amino acids were detected, including the seven essential amino acids. All cultivars analysed were found to be of good nutritional quality in terms of long-chain fatty acid proportions, i.e. PUFA: SFA and n-6: n-3 ratios. Slight, but statistically significant, compositional variations were found among cultivars. The results obtained in this study suggest that the locally grown carob cultivars are highly nutritious and can thus be considered as an alternative food source in South Africa.

Functional Components of Carob Fruit: Linking the Chemical and Biological Space

“…Previous studies reported that total sugar content in the cultivars ranged between 40 and 55 g·100 g −1 ·d.m. [3,35,36]. In general, cultivated carob cultivars have higher sugar content than wild ones [35].…”

“…and 1.8–10.2 g 100 g −1 ·d.m. concentrations, respectively, are also present in carob bean [35,36]. Carob sugars are usually extracted for the production of natural carob syrup.…”

“…The amino acid content of carob fruits consists of a mixture of 17 residues (aspartic acid, glutamic acid, serine, glycine, histidine, arginine, threonine, alanine, tyrosine, valine, proline, methionine, isoleucine, leucine, cysteine, phenylalanine and lysine) [36,68]. Aspartic acid, asparagine, alanine, glutamic acid, leucine and valine together comprise ca.…”

“…Potassium content ranges between 970 mg 100 g −1 dry weight and 1120 mg 100 g −1 dry weight, whereas the concentration of calcium reaches up to 300 mg 100 g −1 dry weight [36,63,68,69]. Taking into consideration that cow milk contains an average of 1200 mg calcium per liter, a portion of carob fruit contains an almost equivalent concentration of calcium with a cup of milk [70].…”

“…Among the microminerals, iron has the highest concentration. Finally, its seeds generally contain higher macro- and microminerals than the pods [36,63,68,69]. …”