User talk:Gujant

Dear Töny,

Your are doing a very good job with your maqui.

However I suggest you to improve some points in your text which are mostly in bold & italic text: - you could take the berries are favored food for birds... in the paragraph wild maqui as an other titel like === Seed distribution=== before harvesting. - I would suggest you to give an other title to the section === products and uses === for example === composition and uses of anthocyanin === because you speak a lot of anthocyanin which are certainly not the only compond (sugar, vitamin...). To facilitate the lecture I suggest you first the text under benefits than polyphenols, because it is easier to understood why this compound is important and that to have more details. Under Uses, you say once more It has been planted in Spain, I would like delete this sentence because you are already talk in cultivated maqui under agronomy. - History could be next to the description.

I don't adjust your write form in english, because I'm not good enough.

Best regards Sophie

Dear Töni

You wrote an interesting text about maqui and covered a lot of aspects of this plant.

Anyway I suggest you some slight changes. Most of them I commented directly in the text below (in bold and italic). The chapter "products and uses" is not so easy to understand. I didn't really get how polyphenols and anthocyanin are linked and which one of this substances really is important for health. Maybe you should describe this more clearly...

Best regards

Marisa — Preceding unsigned comment added by Marisamunz (talk • contribs) 19:41, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Tree
It is a small dioecious tree reaching 4-5 m in height, evergreen, and with a divided trunk with smooth bark. Its branches are abundant, thin and flexible. Its leaves are simple, opposite, pendulous, oval-lanceolate, with serrated edges, glabrous, coriaceous with venation and strong red petioles.(It's a long sentence i don't really understand) In the beginning of spring the tree sheds the old cohort. The old cohort is used as a carbonhydrate source to form the new leaves and flowers.

Flowers and berries
Maqui flowers at the end of spring. The white flowers are unisexual and small. They yield a small edible fruit (maqui berry). A tree at the age of seven years produces up to 10 kg berries per year. 'The berries are a favored food for birds at the end of summer. The seed distribution by birds is important for genetic diversity. The deforestation of the Valdivian temperate rainforests of Chile prohibit the seed dispersal by birds and leads to an inbreeding depression.' The small, purple-black berries are approximately 4-6 mm in diameter and contain 4-8 angled seeds. They taste reminding of blackberries, watermelon, and acai berries. The maqui berry is also known as the Chilean wineberry, and locally in Spanish as maqui or maque.

Wild Maqui
The main area of wild Maqui can be found in the Chilean Forests. It includes the Comquinmbo and Aysen Region and is 170’000 hectares. The average area yield is about 220 kg per hectare în one year. On this results a potential production of 37'400 tons of fresh berries per year. The real estimated production is about 90 tons per year because most of the Maqui area is very difficult to access.

Harvesting
The Berries are collected in the time from December to March each year. The collecting time depends on the geographical position. Each season 2000 families, mainly Mapuche families, work in the process of collecting the berries. This work is financially important for the Mapuche families. The workers move to the collection area with high prescence(presence?) of Maqui near the Andes Mountains by their own.

The first harvest process is to collect the side branches of the trees and take them to one spot. In a next step they bang the branches to separate the berries and the leaf blades from the branches. They take the branches again under the trees for decomposition. Then a mechanic process separates the berries from leaf blades. The stored fruits are finally sold. The supply for Maqui berries is very low at the local market. The price ranges from 0.65 US $ to 1.5 U.S. $ per 100 g.

Polyphenols
Only limited polyphenol research has been completed on the maqui berry showing its anthocyanin content includes eight glucoside pigments of delphinidin and cyanidin, the principal anthocyanin being delphinidin 3-sambubioside-5-glucoside (34% of total anthocyanins). The average total anthocyanin content was 138 mg per 100 g of fresh fruit (212 mg per 100g of dry fruit) placing maqui low among berries for anthocyanin content (see Anthocyanins for tabulated content data).

Anthocyanins are also present in maqui leaves.

Benefits
The anthocyanin rich extract of Maqui berries has health- promoting properties which are researched by several studies. In a research with mice the extract had a protective effect against ischaemia by reperfusion heart damage. In vitro studies proposes the inhibition of adipogenese and inflammation and the avoiding of LDL oxidation. The antioxidant activity of Anthocyanin can maybe prohibit the oxidative damage of cells such as skin cells. Other studies evidence an anti-diabetic effect.

In the traditional Chilean medicine the extract of Aristotelia chilensis has been used to trait diarrhea, inflammation and fever. (--> uses)

Uses
(--> this chapter should be before "Polyphenols" to better understand the following text...) The Maqui berries are an interesting source of anthocyanin and are used for food and pharmaceutic. For this, the Maqui are raw, dried or processed into jam, juice, an astringent or as an ingredient in processed foods or beverages. It has been planted in Spain.

File:Maqui juice.jpeg listed for deletion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Maqui juice.jpeg, has been listed at Files for deletion. Please see the to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Peacock (talk) 18:38, 3 April 2013 (UTC)