Asian Berries: Health Benefits (Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals)

As consumers look to natural foods to promote health and well-being, their focus has been on foods with recognized health properties. Natural health products with rich antioxidant and high free radical scavenging activity such as Asian berries currently draw the interest of scientific researchers, whose goal is to evaluate Asian berries’ nutritional and health-promoting properties.

Collected in one source, Asian Berries: Health Benefits covers a wide array of different Asian berries, their properties, potential health benefits, and possible uses. Asian berries are well-known traditional nutritional foods and herbal medicinals as well as valuable nourishing tonic, which has been used for thousands of years in Asian countries. They are traditionally employed as herbal medicinals from ancient times. Recently, Asian berries widely marketed as health foods have become increasingly popular in the Western world because of their health-promoting properties. This book explores a wide array of possibilities and benefits that come from Asian berries.

Complete with 18 chapters written by experts in their field, Asian Berries: Health Benefits serves as an excellent reference for anyone interested in the science and technology of bioactive components from Asian berries as health-promoting foods.

Professor Xiao Gengsheng is the Vice President, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Science, China. He got his Master Degree of Agriculture from South China Agricultural University, Master degree of Public Administration from Tsinghua University. His work mainly focuses on fruit and vegetable processing. He is also appointed as scientist in mulberry fruit processing by China Ministry of Agriculture.

He has led 40 national-, provincial-level scientific and technological projects. He received 18 Scientific and Technological Achievements Awards, including three first-place prizes of Guangdong Provincial and Ministry of Agriculture, eight second-place prizes, four third-place prizes, and six City Awards. He has 28 invention patents on new mulberry and silkworm varieties approved by the National and Guangdong Provincial Variety Examination Committee. He published 5 books, and more than 150 research papers, including more than 30 SCI papers. He has also lead/participate over 12 new product developments. He participated in the formation1 agricultural industry standard and 2 local standards in Guangdong Province. He was awarded as the Guangdong Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Leader in 2009, and won the Guangdong Ding -Ying Technology Award in 2012.

Dr Xu Yujuan is Deputy Director in Sericulture and Agri-Food Research Institute of Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China. Dr Xu Yujuan majors in Food Science and Engineering, has received the Award of the Scientific and Technological Innovation Leader for "Millions of Plan" of China, the State Council Special Allowance Expert of China, the Young and Middle-aged Science and Technology Innovation Leader of the China Ministry of Science and Technology. She has been recognized as an expert in post-harvest processing of Lingnan fruits in the Modern Agricultural Industrial Technology System of Guangdong Province. Her fruit and vegetable processing team is known as the "National Agricultural Research Innovation Team" by China Ministry of Agricultural.

Have been working on research and development of fruit and vegetable preservation and processing over 20 years, Dr Xu leads over 20 national, provincial science and technology projects, including the National "Twelfth Five-Year" Science and Technology Support Program, National Public Welfare Industry, Science and Technology Special Project, and Guangdong Natural Science Foundation Team and Key Projects. She has received 13 Awards from Guangdong province, including 4 first -place prizes, 3 second-place prizes of Guangdong Science and Technology, 1 second-place prize of China Agricultural Science and Technology Awards, the 4th National Women's Inventor Rookie Award, the 13th Guangdong Ding-Ying Technology Award, etc. She also has 36 invention patents and published 5 books, 138 research papers.

Dr Yuanshan Yu is Director of Fruit and Vegetable Processing Unit, Sericulture and Agri-Food Processing Research Institute, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China. His research interests are in emerging technology for tropical and subtropical fruit processing, and fermented fruit juice. Dr Yu was selected as an outstanding young research scientist of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Areas (2016), the top Scientific and Technological Innovative Talents of Guangdong Research Program (2015), the Outstanding Young Scientific and Technological Talents of agricultural product processing industry (2017), and also named as the Jin-Ying Star of Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (2016).

Over the past five years, Dr Yu is PI of more than 10 research projects, including one project supported by National Natural Science Foundation for Youths, one project supported by National Key R&D Program, and eight other projects supported by Provincial and Municipal funding agencies. Dr Yu has published more than 60 peer-reviewed research papers, from which 16 papers as the first author, and registered more than 20 patents in China. Dr Yu has won one the first-place prize and one the third-place prize of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province, and one the second-place prize of China Agricultural Science and Technology program, and three the first-place prizes of Guangdong Agricultural Science and Technology Extension. Dr Yu's research unit was selected as the National Agricultural Research Innovation Team by the Ministry of Agriculture of China in 2015.