Mango pulp is very perishable and so has a short shelf life, which both marketers and consumers would like to be longer. Manually sliced mango was treated by coating opuntia mucilage-rosemary oil (Mu + RO), 2 g rosemary oil microencapsul (ROM), and 2 g (ROM) plus (Mu + RO); the treated mango pieces were placed in plastic trays, and overwrapped with PVDC film and then stored at 6°C. Changes in t...

Isorhamnetin glycosides are representative compounds of Opuntia ficus-indica that possess different biological activities. There is slight information about the changes in bioaccessibility induced by the glycosylation pattern of flavonoids, particularly for isorhamnetin. In this study, the bioaccessibility and permeability of isorhamnetin glycosides extracted from O. ficus-indica were contraste...

Background High-intensity exercise typically leads to a depletion of body carbohydrate stores, primarily muscle glycogen. Therefore, typical ‘sports recovery drinks’ include a high carbohydrate dose together with proteins so as to stimulate muscle glucose uptake and glycogen resynthesis via increased plasma insulin level. In fact, any intervention that elevate plasma insulin following exercise ...

We describe here the isolation and characterization of a major albumin from the seeds of Opuntia ficus-indica (Cactaceae). This protein has a molecular mass of 6.5 kDa and was isolated by a combination of gel filtration chromatography and reverse-phase HPLC. The amino acid composition of this protein was determined and it was shown to have similarities with the amino acid composition of several...

This paper focuses on the development of a processing scheme to obtain a water-soluble natural yellow colourant from Opuntia fruits for application in food, paying special attention to the extraction procedure. Edible yellow Opuntia fruits grown in Murcia (Spain) were homogenized and extracted with ethanol, water, or ethanol/water (60:40) solvents. Pigment extract was chemically characterized a...

Ploidy has been well studied and used extensively in the genus Opuntia to determine species boundaries, detect evidence of hybridization, and infer evolutionary patterns. We carried out chromosome counts for all members of the Humifusa clade to ascertain whether geographic patterns are associated with differences in ploidy. We then related chromosomal data to observed morphological variability,...