Miracle fruit, a berry from the plant
Synsepalum dulcificum, is also indigenous to Africa. This berry grows in the coastal region of West Africa, and first came to European attention in the 1850s when an English surgeon noted that the commander of a British fort in Dahomey enjoyed ‘constant opportunities of testing the wonderful effects of this fruit’.
The so-called ‘miracle berry’ was rediscovered in the 1920s by a US Department of Agriculture collecting expedition. It is an ornamental shrub, usually branched with dense foliage that gr0ws no higher than 6 feet and bears several crops each year.
The fruit was found to contain anthocyanins and flavonol pigments which could have potential to be used as natural food colorants. The red pigments of miracle fruit (14.3 mg/100 g fresh wt) were identified as cyanidn-3-monogalactoside, cyanidin-3-monoglucoside, cyanidin-3-monoarabinoside, delphimidin-3-monogalactoside and delphmidin-3-monoarabinoside existing in a ratio of 188:62:9:5:2, respectively.
Miracle fruit contains the protein miraculin, which is related to the protein thaumatin found in another ‘sweetener’ plant Thaumatocossus.
Miracle fruit
