Ascorbic acid content in exotic fruits: A contribution to produce quality data for food composition databases

Ascorbic acid (AA) is a water-soluble vitamin mainly present in fruits and vegetables. Food Composition Databases (FCDB) provide detailed information on nutritionally important components in foods. However, in some FCDB there is a significant lack of information on vitamin C content. The aim of this study is to produce new data for FCDB by measuring the AA content in 26 types of exotic fruits and to evaluate the nutritional value of these fruits as a source of vitamin C. In this study, the analytical method used to measure ascorbic acid content is an economic, rapid and previously validated High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) method. Ascorbic acid content per 100 g of edible portion ranged between 0.925 ± 0.018 mg for kiwano and 117 ± 1.64 mg for arbutus. For all the analyzed exotic fruits and considering a mean daily consumption of 100 g/day, twelve of them provide more than 30% of the Dietary Reference Intake. About a quarter of the analyzed exotic fruits are not found in any of the five FCDB considered in this study. The worldwide global market is expanding the production and consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, mostly exotic, increasing the need of updating the food composition databases with high quality data. The analytical results obtained in this study are an important source of reliable data to be included in the Portuguese food composition database.