Prickly annone
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Soursop ( Annona muricata ) |
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| Annona muricata | ||||||||||||
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The Soursop ( Annona muricata ) is a flowering plant in the family of annonaceous (Annonaceae). In German it is also called Sauersack , in other languages it is called Soursop , Sirsak , Graviola , Guanábana , Guyabano or Corossol .
features
The stachelannone is an evergreen tree that reaches heights of 8 to 12 meters under normal conditions. It has a tree top that is only slightly branched . The leaves resemble bay leaves and sit alternately on the branches.
The flowers contain three sepals and petals , are elongated and green-yellow in color. They give off a carrion-like odor and thus attract flies to pollinate .
From a botanical point of view, the fruit of the sorbet is a large berry . It grows up to 40 centimeters long and weighs up to 4 kilograms. Large, black (poisonous) seeds sit in the soft, white pulp. The pericarp is covered with soft spines, which form the remains of the female sexual apparatus. The spines therefore have no protective function against predators.
The number of chromosomes is 2n = 14 or 16.
distribution
The prickly horse is native to South America and the Caribbean . It grows in lowland forests with a semi-arid climate . It was introduced by humans as a fruit tree in all tropical regions, other species of Annona were also cultivated in Palestine and Spain .
Use
The juicy yellowish-white pulp is similar in consistency and taste to the related cherimoya , with a characteristic sour note. This exotic fruit has hardly achieved any importance for export, especially since its fruiting body is very sensitive to pressure when ripe and is therefore difficult to transport.
Annona muricata is very easy to process industrially: the pulp is scraped off and separated from the black seeds by sieving. The amount of peel (and thus the waste) is low, while the juicy consistency enables a high yield of juice or puree, so their degree of utilization is quite high. The sour bag extracts obtained in this way are used differently from region to region:
- In the South American countries the sour sack is often squeezed and used as a versatile, very fruity raw material for soft drinks, ice cream or jam. In Colombia the white pulp is mixed with water and sugar and then consumed as a drink. Chilled, pureed pulp is also already shrink-wrapped in foil and sold as “pulpa de guanábana” in greengrocers and supermarkets.
- In Indonesia , the sour sack puree is cooked with sugar into a kind of pudding (“dodol sirsak”) or made into sweets .
- In the Philippines , the unripe fruits are eaten as vegetables; they then taste similar to roasted corn .
- Many Caribbean islands ( Curaçao , Saint Thomas , Barbados , Cuba ) do without the fruits and instead use the fermented leaves to prepare a tea that is somewhere between coffee and black tea in terms of taste .
Cultural history
The hard, shiny black seeds were found near graves in ancient Peruvian civilizations . Either the seeds were left directly or the whole fruit was left with the deceased. The advantages of the Annona species - which are variable depending on the species - have ensured that humans have also cultivated Annona outside of their country of origin. When the fruit came to Spain it was called Guanábana there , in France Corossol . The actual name comes from Haiti, where the fruit was called "anon" (cream apple). Linnaeus later Latinized the name to "Annona". The correct name is Annona muricata Linné.
toxicology
The nerve toxin annonacin contained in the seeds of the prickly pear appears to be the cause of a neurodegenerative disease that only occurs on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe and is probably related to the consumption of plants containing annonacin. It is a so-called tauopathy , which is associated with a pathological accumulation of the tau protein in the brain. The experimental results show for the first time that the plant neurotoxin annonacin is actually responsible for this accumulation.
The French food safety authority ( Agence française de sécurité sanitaire des aliments ), however, found in a statement in 2010 that the currently available results from laboratory and animal research do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about health risks in humans. A causal connection between the consumption of Annona muricata and the perceived cases of neurodegenerative diseases in Guadeloupe has not been proven.
pharmacology
According to research published in 2011, fruit extracts obtained from spiny stings have been successfully used in laboratory tests to inhibit the growth of certain breast cancer cells . Laboratory research results published in 2012 indicate comparable growth-inhibiting effects in pancreatic cancer cells .
According to research published in 2012, the annonacin contained in the seeds as an ethanolic extract in combination with other herbal substances is a highly effective active ingredient for killing the larvae of the yellow fever mosquito responsible for transmitting the dangerous dengue virus .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Annona muricata at Tropicos.org. In: IPCN Chromosome Reports . Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis
- ↑ In: Samson: Tropical Fruits, p. 216.
- ^ Information Service Science: Tauopathy caused by plant neurotoxins , May 4, 2007.
- ↑ Avis de l'Agence française de sécurité sanitaire des aliments relatif aux risques liés à la consommation de corossol et de ses préparations (pdf; 151 kB) Agence française de sécurité sanitaire des aliments. April 28, 2010. Retrieved November 15, 2013.
- ↑ Y. Dai, S. Hogan, EM Schmelz, YH Ju, C. Canning, K. Zhou: Selective growth inhibition of human breast cancer cells by graviola fruit extract in vitro and in vivo involving downregulation of EGFR expression. In: Nutrition and cancer. Volume 63, number 5, 2011, pp. 795-801, doi : 10.1080 / 01635581.2011.563027 , PMID 21767082 .
- ↑ Shyng-Shiou F Yuan, Hsueh-Ling Chang, Hsiao-Wen Chen, Yao-Tsung Yeh, Ying-Hsien Kao, Kuei-Hsiang Lin, Yang-Chang Wu, Jinu-Huang Su: Annonacin, a mono-tetrahydrofuran acetogenin, arrests cancer cells at the G1 phase and causes cytotoxicity in a Bax- and caspase-3-related pathway. In: Life Sciences . 72, 2003, pp. 2853-2861, doi : 10.1016 / S0024-3205 (03) 00190-5 .
- ↑ MP Torres, S Rachagani, V Purohit, P Pandey, S Joshi, ED Moore, SL Johansson, PK Singh u. a .: Graviola: A novel promising natural-derived drug that inhibits tumorigenicity and metastasis of pancreatic cancer cells in vitro and in vivo through altering cell metabolism . In: Cancer Letters . 323, No. 1, 2012, pp. 29-40. doi : 10.1016 / j.canlet.2012.03.031 . PMID 22475682 . PMC 3371140 (free full text).
- ↑ Adelia Grzybowski, Marcela Tiboni, Mário AN da Silva, Rodrigo F. Chitolina, Maurício Passos, José D. Fontana: The combined action of phytolarvicides for the control of dengue fever vector, Aedes aegypti. In: Revista Brasileira de Farmacognosia . 22, 2012, pp. 549-557, doi : 10.1590 / S0102-695X2012005000026 .
literature
- Rolf Blancke: Color Atlas Plants of the Caribbean and Central America , 1999, Verlag Eugen Ulmer, ISBN 3-8001-3512-4 .
