Functional components in Zizyphus with emphasis on polysaccharides

Abstract

Zizyphus jujuba (Chinese jujube), mainly distributed in the subtropical regions of Asia, has been cultivated for over 4,000 years and used as food, food additive, flavor, as well as traditional Chinese herb, as it possesses analeptic, palliative, and antibechic functions. The fruit of jujube is quite popular due to high nutritional value and presence of many functional components, in which polysaccharide is the most important one. Polysaccharides, being essential constituents of all living organisms, are naturally occurring polymers of aldoses and ketoses linked together through glycosidic linkages. In recent years, polysaccharides of plant origin have emerged as a vital class of bioactive nature products; however, there is a lack of information regarding analysis and biological activity of jujube polysaccharides. Moreover, the composition of polysaccharides in jujube may vary with different species, growth environment, cultivar variety, and extraction and separation methods, which in turn may affect the overall biological activity. The objective of this manuscript is to review the current status associated with jujube polysaccharide, including nutritional and functional components; methods of extraction, purification, separation, identification, and quantitation; as well as biological activity.

Comparison of physical and chemical composition of three chinese jujube (Ziziphus jujuba Mill.) cultivars cultivated in four districts of Xinjiang region in China

“…Similarly, the Huizao cultivar in this study also had the total sugar content around 30 g/100 g FW. On addition, fructose, sucrose, and glucose were detected in all the jujube fruit cultivars in this study, which was consistent with the published reports (Guo et al, 2015a;Kao & Chen, 2015). Sucrose appeared to be the dominant soluble sugar in all the samples.…”

Variations of the nutritional composition of jujube fruit (Ziziphus jujuba Mill.) during maturation stages

“…The cyclic nucleotides cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) and cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) are second messengers having antioxidant properties and are involved in many physiological processes. [33,34] Figure 5 presents the content of these cyclic nucleotides and their variation in jujube fruit during fruit maturation. The results showed the same trend in the synthesis of cGMP and cAMP.…”

Comparison of volatile compositions of 15 different varieties of Chinese jujube (Ziziphus jujuba Mill.)

“…is mainly grown in the northern China. It is commonly consumed as a fresh fruit, also used as a traditional medicine because of its rich amount of bioactive chemicals (Gao et al 2013;Ji et al 2017; Kao and Chen 2015). In addition, jujube extract is widely used as a desirable flavoring ingredient in food industry due to its unique and desirable aroma.…”