Black Goji Berry
Black goji berry is the dried ripe fruit of Lycium ruthenicum, a thorny salt tolerant shrub of the Solanaceae native to the saline desert margins of Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia and Xinjiang, and it is a different species from the familiar red goji, Lycium barbarum. The dried berry is small, round to slightly flattened, four to eight millimetres across, matt black to purple black with a short pale stalk, and it has a thin skin over a small quantity of pulp and several flat kidney shaped seeds.
Its commercial interest rests almost entirely on its pigment. The fruit carries an unusually high concentration of acylated anthocyanins built on the petunidin skeleton. The dominant single compound is petunidin-3-O-rutinoside-5-O-glucoside acylated with p-coumaric acid. That pigment set is what gives an infusion of the whole berry its striking colour change from blue in neutral or slightly alkaline water to violet and then red as acid is added. The fruit also carries polysaccharides and a modest sugar content.
The trade sells the berry dried, and as a spray dried extract standardised on anthocyanin content. The anthocyanins are freely water soluble, stable in the acid range and progressively degraded above pH 5, and sensitive to heat, light and oxygen, so extracts are packed under nitrogen in opaque containers and beverage applications are confined to acidified systems.
We source bulk Black Goji Berry from top China manufacturers for our partners. The manufacturer is in Hebei. A smaller requirement can ship in a combined container with other ingredients.
Please send the grade you need, the volume and your destination port, and we will come back with a solution and a price.
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- Function
- Nutraceutical
Specifications
| Item | Specification |
|---|---|
| Appearance, dried fruit | Matt black to purple black round berries, free from mould and insect damage |
| Appearance, extract | Dark purple fine free-flowing powder |
| Identification | Conforms to Lycium ruthenicum fruit and to reference chromatogram for petunidin glycosides |
| Berry count | Not more than 1200 berries per 50 g |
| Total anthocyanins, extract | Not less than 15.0 percent by pH differential method |
| Moisture, dried fruit | Not more than 12.0 percent |
| Loss on drying, extract | Not more than 5.0 percent |
| Total ash | Not more than 6.0 percent |
| Stalk and foreign matter | Not more than 1.0 percent |
| Broken and shrivelled berries | Not more than 3.0 percent |
| Residual ethanol, extract | Not more than 0.5 percent |
| Sulphur dioxide | Not detected |
| Lead | Not more than 1.0 mg/kg |
| Arsenic | Not more than 0.5 mg/kg |
| Cadmium | Not more than 0.3 mg/kg |
| Total plate count | Not more than 10000 cfu/g |
| Yeast and mould | Not more than 500 cfu/g |
| Escherichia coli | Absent in 1 g |
| Salmonella | Absent in 25 g |
Common Markets Grades
Whole dried fruit is graded principally on berry count per fifty grams, which is the trade shorthand for size, and then on moisture, colour uniformity, the proportion of broken and shrivelled berries, stalk and foreign matter content, and the absence of sulphur treatment. Wild harvested and cultivated material are distinguished. Wild material is smaller and darker and is usually specified separately, and organic certification is common on the cultivated crop. Sun dried and hot air dried grades differ in colour retention and are not interchangeable for infusion use.
Extract grades are specified on anthocyanin content measured as petunidin-3-glucoside or expressed as total anthocyanins by the pH differential method, commonly at 5, 10, 15 or 25 percent, together with the carrier used, usually maltodextrin, and on residual solvent. A separate polysaccharide grade standardised at 20 to 50 percent by the phenol sulphuric acid method is traded for supplement use. Freeze dried whole berry powder is a third article, distinguished from extract by the absence of any concentration step.
Applications
- Whole berry herbal infusions and blooming teas sold on the blue to violet colour change of the brew
- Anthocyanin colouring of acidified beverages, jellies, gummies and iced confections
- Antioxidant supplement capsules and tablets carrying the standardised anthocyanin extract
- Eye health formulations, where the extract is combined with lutein, zeaxanthin and bilberry
- Instant drink sachets and effervescent tablets using the spray dried extract
- Functional snack bars, biscuits and chocolate carrying whole dried berries as an inclusion
- Fruit wines, spirits and infused vinegars produced in the growing regions
- Polysaccharide supplements sold on immune support positioning
- Colouring and active ingredient in skin care outside the food trade
China Manufacturers of Black Goji Berry
Top Black Goji Berry manufacturers in China.
Company names and logos are the property of the manufacturers themselves. They are listed here because our own directory records them as producing this ingredient. A listing is not an endorsement by them, and we do not represent them or speak on their behalf.
Regulatory Status
In the United States dried Lycium ruthenicum fruit is used as a dietary ingredient in supplements under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act and as a botanical infusion ingredient. It has no food additive regulation of its own and no published GRAS notification, so a manufacturer selling it for conventional food use rather than supplement use establishes the status of its own preparation. An extract offered specifically to add colour would be a colour additive, and only the entries listed in 21 CFR Part 73 are exempt from certification, which black goji anthocyanin is not, so material intended as a colour requires a petition or a use that falls within an existing listing. Imported dried fruit is subject to preventive controls and foreign supplier verification under the Food Safety Modernization Act, and pesticide residues are enforced against the tolerances in 40 CFR Part 180.
In the European Union Lycium ruthenicum fruit has no significant record of consumption within the Union before May 1997, so it must be assessed under Regulation (EU) 2015/2283 on novel foods, and an operator establishes whether its particular preparation is authorised or requires an application. This is a different position from Lycium barbarum fruit, which was accepted as not novel. Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 authorises anthocyanins as the colour E163, and Regulation (EU) No 231/2012 defines the permitted source material and extraction solvents, so a black goji pigment offered as a colour has to fall within that definition. Codex Alimentarius has no commodity standard for the fruit; the General Standard for Contaminants and Toxins in Food and Feed and the general pesticide residue provisions apply.
Manufacturing Process
Fruit is hand harvested at full ripeness over a short summer window and must be dried quickly because the thin skin makes the fresh berry perishable. Traditional practice is shade or sun drying on racks, while commercial lines use low temperature hot air drying or vacuum freeze drying, both of which retain more anthocyanin than open sun drying. Dried fruit is destalked, cleaned by air classification and vibrating screens, graded by size on sieves, colour sorted, and treated with a short steam or infrared pass to reduce microbial load before packing at eight to twelve percent moisture.
Extract manufacture starts from the dried or frozen fruit, which is milled or pulped and extracted with acidified aqueous ethanol at moderate temperature, citric acid being used to hold the anthocyanins in the flavylium form. The extract is separated from the marc by filtration or centrifugation and clarified. It is then passed over a macroporous adsorption resin that binds the anthocyanins while sugars, organic acids and salts pass to waste, the column is washed with water, and the pigment is desorbed with ethanol. Solvent is stripped under vacuum at low temperature to protect the pigment, the concentrate is standardised with maltodextrin to the declared anthocyanin content, and the solution is spray dried and packed under nitrogen. Where a polysaccharide grade is wanted, the aqueous raffinate from the resin step is concentrated by ultrafiltration and precipitated with ethanol instead of being discarded.
