Nutritional compilation of commonly consumed organic and conventional fruits and vegetables from India

Abstract

In recent years, the interest for organic foods has been increased drastically due to their production without any synthetic chemicals. More emphasis for organic foods was focused towards the analysis of chemicals used during the cultivation which are known to have toxic effects. Very limited literature is available for the comparison of nutritional components in organic (OR) and conventional (CO) foods of Indian origin. The present investigation was undertaken to evaluate the nutritional components in the commonly cultivated organic and conventional fruits and vegetables of India. The different foods analyzed in the study were Moringa leaf, green amaranthus leaf, tomato, bitter gourd, sweet potato, carrot, sweet orange and papaya. The results of the study revealed that the highest protein content was found in Moringa leaf (OR – 7.15 g/100 g, CO – 8.61 g/100 g) followed with green amaranthus leaves and sweet potato tuber. Similarly, dietary fiber was found with higher content in Moringa leaf (OR −8.09 g/100 g, CO – 9.01 g/100 g). Among the food groups analyzed for minerals, irrespective of the cultivation method, both organic and conventional green leafy vegetables (GLVs) were found to have higher contents of vitals minerals including Fe, Zn, Ca and Mn with the values ranging between 2.10 and 6.49, 0.54 – 0.92, and 1.22 – 1.32 mg/100 g, respectively. Vitamin B9 (μg/100 g) among the analyzed samples was found to be highest in green amaranthus (OR – 71.9, CO – 68.38), bitter gourd (OR – 65.38, CO – 62.27) and papaya (OR – 65.08, CO – 63.44). GLVs were recorded with high content of vitamin B5 (mg/100 g) in Moringa (OR – 0.53, CO – 0.45) and green amaranthus (OR – 0.47, CO – 0.42). Similarly, vitamin C (mg/100 g) was highest in GLVs which ranged between 109.82 and 120.11 and 83.23–88.75 mg/100 g for Moringa and green amaranthus samples, respectively. The carotenoids were found in all the analyzed samples with GLVs having the highest total carotenoids (19,590 – 41,856 μg/100 g) with OR samples having higher content in comparison to CO samples. It can be concluded from the study that, with few exceptional parameters there was no significant variation observed for the nutritional parameters between organic and conventional foods.