Red beetroot: Health benefits, production techniques, and quality maintaining for food industry

Abstract

Red beetroot and its functional products have gained popularity in the food industry and are utilized as a food colorant or additive. Red beetroots are a great source of unique bioactive components called betalains and are rich in polyphenols, antioxidants, vitamins, carotenoids, flavonoids, minerals, and ascorbic acids. It has diverse therapeutic effects associated with biochemical content. However, maintaining health benefits is problematic due to its betalain instability. It is essential to choose the best cultivar with high betalain levels for ensuring the target product in the food industry. In addition, betalains are quite sensitive toward production techniques and pre and postharvest factors, which are the main indicators for affecting the food quality of red beetroot. Therefore, we aimed to review the results of some studies on red beetroot and provide a comprehensive knowledge on health benefits, production techniques, and quality maintenance for the food industry. Moreover, nutrition content, potential uses, and future outlook were also summarized. Practical applications: The present review summarizes a comprehensive knowledge about pre and postharvest factors affecting quality of red beetroots and indicates ways to maintain high quality red beetroots for promising value-added products in respect of consumers and food processors. Moreover, recently reported processing techniques for red beetroots was examined and appropriate techniques were explained in order to sustain bioavailability and stability of betalains for food industry.