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Spices – the best speciality ingredients known for medicinal properties
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Tuesday, 03 May, 2011, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Hasan Mulani, Mumbai
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Spices have been treasured for the flavour, pungency and colour they impart to food. The Indian spices have been well recognised traditionally for their medicinal and hale & hearty properties, especially in the alternate systems of medicine.
Later, the scientific validation of these healthy and medicinal properties and study of their phytochemistry, using up to date technology, has given increased credibility to the traditional medicinal uses of spices.
Dr Shamina Aziz associated with the Indian Institute of Spices Research – (IISR), division of crop production and post harvest technology as a senior scientist, said, “Spices are increasingly being noticed for their pharmacological activities and therefore their potential as a functional food, essential ingredients and has magnified scope.”
From last many years, the Indian spices market (both domestic and international) has shown remarkable growth despite recession, financial crisis and wars. As per the latest estimation, the current global market for spices is over $5 trillion but European Union (EU) has become a saturated market, whereas Asia Pacific will show the highest growth rate in the next five years.
According to the Spices Board of India, about 433,455 tonnes of spices and spice products valued Rs 5,485.40 crore has been exported from the country during April-January 2010-11 fiscal, exceeding the target in terms of value both in rupee and dollar terms.
There has been a five per cent increase in volume, 18 per cent in rupee value and in dollar terms, the increase was 23 per cent, the Spices Board said in a release. During the same period in 2009-10, about 413,895 tonnes valued at Rs 4,646.50 crore had been exported.
The Board also said that compared to the spices export target of 465,000 tonnes valued Rs 5,100 crore fixed for the 2010-11 fiscal, the achievement of 433,455 tonnes valued Rs 5,485.40 crore during the period is 93 per cent in terms of quantity and 108 per cent in rupee value.
In one of the interviews to Food & Beverage News, Kirandip Swani, former chairman, Indian Spices and Foodstuff Exporters Association (ISFEA), said, “Our spices export mainly consists of spices like pepper, cardamom, chilli, ginger, turmeric, coriander, cumin, celery, fennel, fenugreek, garlic, nutmeg & mace, vanilla, curry powder, mint products and spice oils and oleoresins.
“India is the largest producer of spices but we are also the largest consumer of spices. As a regular exporter, India is losing its prominence since last few years. India really does not have specific laws as far as food safety and consumer safety is concerned. Today more and more traders are going towards value addition. Value addition chain enables a total control over the production process where traders can maintain certain quality standards throughout the chain.”
“Also the overseas buyer coming to India wants to ensure the processing facilities, quality control system so that supply chain down can give him a dependable product year round,” he added.
The value addition and using spices as speciality ingredients for food – requires clean raw materials whose basic qualities like aroma, daze flavour, pungency, colour and also other are preserved.
“The main value added products of spices in the market include white pepper, dehydrated black pepper, sterilised pepper, freeze-dried green pepper, green pepper in brine, green cardamom, ginger candy/preserves, wine and beer from ginger, salted ginger, curcuminoids, dehydrated turmeric powder, among the long list,” Dr Aziz said.
Speciality of Indian spices
The Indian spices owe their unique properties to the diverse array of organic compounds, called secondary metabolites that they contain. These secondary metabolites do not appear to have any apparent role in the plants’ growth and development, despite the enormous input of resources required for their synthesis and the complexity of the final chemical structures. “With the available literature on spices pharmacological and related activities, a study on their chemistry, synthesis and properties, in combination with drug modeling, molecular biology and nanotechnology, holds great promise of a gold mine of nutraceuticals just waiting to be explored and exploited,” Dr Aziz added.
According to IISR, spices also owe their flavour to the volatile oils and taste to the oleoresin. The aroma compounds include alcohols, aldehydes, amines, esters, ethers, ketones, terpenes, thiols and others. The predominant flavour components in black pepper are ß-caryophyllene and limonene.
Cardamom’s unique flavour comes from 1,8-cineole and a-terpinly acetates. Ginger oil is mainly composed of mono- and sesquiterpenes, mainly zingiberene. Ginger oleoresin consists of the pungent principles gingerols and shogaols. Curcumioids are the principal colouring and bioactive components of turmeric. The bark oil of cinnamon consists of 75 per cent cinnamaldehyde; the major constituent in clove oil is eugenol; nutmeg oil consists of up to 88 per cent monoterpene hydrocarbons, mainly sabinene and pinenes.
In India, Calicut-based Indian Institute of Spices Research, is a premier institute doing research on the major spices black pepper (piper nigrum), cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), ginger (Zingiber officinale), turmeric (Curcuma longa), cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum), cassia (Cinnamomum cassia), clove (syzygium aromaticum), nutmeg (Myristica fragrans), garcinia (Garcinia gummi-gutta and G. indica), vanilla (Vanilla planifolia), paprika (Capsicum annum). “We posses the world’s largest germplasm of the above crops and have characterised most of the germplasm for their qualitative and quantitative parameters, using biochemical and biotechnological tools. We have an impressive package of practices for cultivation including plant protection, organic farming and post harvest processing. A number of improved varieties have been released by our institute, which are suitable for various end uses. India, the land of spices, could exploit the fast growing nutraceuticals and speciality ingredients sector with her high intrinsic quality spices,” IISR added.
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