Fruit Pulp | Oil | Literature Review

MNP produces a highly refined fruit pulp as a base for the food and beverage industries instead of alcoholic and soft drinks. With a unique and pleasurable taste, an attractive colour and odour and health properties such as high vitamin C and potassium, this new fruit product has all the physical requirements of the growing fruit based drinks industry. Marula, Scelerocarya birrea, subspecies caffera, is one of Africa's botanical treasures. Steeped in legends, it has a rich and diverse cultural history, plus natural heritage as an indigenous, wild organic African berry.
More background information on Marula Fruit Pulp.

Marula Pulp Characteristics
Of the wide range of nutrients in the Marula pulp the Vitamin C content has attracted the most attention. Indeed the vitamin C content is important to local communities who know well that it prevents scurvy. It has on average 3 - 4 times the Vitamin C of Orange with up to 194mg per 100g.

The fruit has small amounts of other vitamins such as thiamine, riboflavin and nicotinic acid. It is 85% moisture and 14% carbohydrate, mostly sucrose. Citric acid is the most abundant acid excluding ascorbic acid but malic and tartaric acid have also been noted by scientists. The mineral composition of the fruit shows high concentrations of Potassium, Calcium and Magnesium. A group of panellists best described the aroma of Marula to be like that of grapefruit and there are compounds that the two fruits have in common. However, the similarity in taste between grapefruit and marula is probably because of a dominant bitter taste caused by non volatiles. The smell of marula juice has also been liken to pineapple but this is probably also only in part due to complimentary volatile components such as ethyl acetate, benzaldehyde, linalool.

Marula Natural Product Pty Ltd's Product Characteristics
The total soluble solids of Marula fruit pulp varies between 7.5¡Brix and 15.5¡Brix. Our average value for the 2003 fruit season was 12.1¡Brix. Climate has a large influence on the soluble solids content of Marula and Marula Natural Products concentrates its fruit pulp activities towards then end of the fruit season to bring you the best quality juice.

The vitamin C content of our 2002 Marula Pulp sample was 112.3mg/100ml and a frozen sample from the 2001 season (12 months old at the time) showed a vitamin C content of 106.1mg/100ml and so we are confident that most of the vitamin C content is preserved during freezing, storage and shipping.