Goji Berries as Functional Food: Opportunities and Challenges

For thousands of years, the fruits of Lycium, commonly known as goji berries or wolfberries, have been used as part of the traditional diet and medicine in Asian countries. In addition to organoleptic and nutritional properties, goji berries are valued as sources of polysaccharides, carotenoids, phenolics, and many other non-nutritive compounds. Besides their antioxidant effects, these compounds have attracted attention due to their anti-inflammatory and other functional properties. The global popularity of goji berries as functional food, supported by scientific evidence on their health benefits, and high demand have spread the production of goji berries from traditional Asian regions into Europe and other non-Asian countries. Besides L. chinense and L. barbarum, goji berries from other Lycium species attract scientific interest as potential unexplored sources of health-promoting compounds.

The production of goji berries faces several opportunities and challenges. The chemical composition and bioactivity are goji berries affected by genotypes, environmental conditions, and many other pre-harvest and post-harvest factors. Therefore, further improving biotechnological and processing techniques will be necessary to ensure the sustainable production of goji berries with maximized bioactive compounds. Also, different extraction methods could be optimized and applied to obtain a high yield of recovered goji berries compounds. Since goji berries have great potential for innovative food and pharmaceutical products development, it is also necessary to more detail characterize and reuse the goji-berry-generated waste.

The Research Topic will welcome both research and review papers on the following topics (but not limited to):
▪ Processing of goji berries.
▪ Chemical characterization of goji berries.
▪ Technologies for successful delivery, improving stability and bioavailability of bioactive compounds from goji berries.
▪ Investigation of goji berries' health benefits and safety aspects and their compounds.
▪ Investigation of the food matrix on the functional properties of goji berries-based products.
▪ Valorization of goji by-products and their applications in the food and nutraceutical industries.

Keywords: Goji, Nutritional Properties, Biological Active Compounds, Health Benefits, Processing, Functional Food Products, Phytochemicals, Immune system, BERRY, Berries, Nutrients, polysaccharides, carotenoids, phenolics, Antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, functional food, bioactive compound

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.