Culturing Important Plants for Sweet Secondary Products under Consideration of Environmentally Friendly Aspects

Abstract

Some sweet tasting plant secondary metabolites are non-caloric or low nutritive compounds that have traditional use in food formulations. This mini-review focuses on conventional and advanced cultivation regimes of plants that accumulate sweet tasting or sweet taste modulating secondary metabolites of potential economic importance, in particular mogrosides (Siraitia grosvenorii), phyllodulcin (Hydrangea macrophylla), glycyrrhizin (Glycyrrhiza glabra), steviol glycosides (Stevia grosvenorii), and rubusoside (Rubus suavissimus). Consequential obstacles during the cultivation of Hydrangea macrophylla cultivars outside their natural habitat in a protected cultivation environment are addressed. Culturing at non-habitat locations facilitates short transportation routes of plant material for processing, which can be a key to an economically and environmentally compatible usage. The biosynthetic pathways, as far as known, are shortly mentioned. The proved or hypothetical degradation pathways of the compounds to minimalize environmental contamination are another focal point.