Gooseberry Fruit Juice Gets Boost on Shelf Life
The cape gooseberry is a fruit that traces its origins to Chile and Peru but now grows in temperate and tropical regions across the world. It is a round, smooth berry that looks like a miniature tomato and has a bright yellow to orange color. In Kenya, gooseberries grow wild and are typically consumed by villagers who pick them from surrounding bushes and forests.
In 2019, after attending an agricultural exhibition that focused on underutilized fruits and crops, Viola Maina left her seventeen-year career in media and advertising to set up Gooseberry Delight (GDL), a business focused on the gooseberry value chain from seed propagation to processing. She wanted to transform the perception and potential of the gooseberry; a fruit that had long been neglected in Kenya. Today, GDL makes fruit jams, sauces, and juices and sells fresh and dried berries to supermarkets.
Gooseberry Delight became a PFS client through the Alliance for Inclusive Nutritious Food Program (AINFP) with USAID and TechnoServe. They asked for help to solve some challenges with their bottled gooseberry fruit juice, which had caused them to withdraw the product from the market. Customers were complaining of bottles of juice ‘swelling up’, as well as issues with taste and separation of the juice. GDL was matched with a pair of volunteers from Cargill and J.M. Smucker Co. to help improve their juice-making process.
Zahara Sotoudeh, a product developer in pet research and development who currently works on cat food, but who has also worked on jams and jellies, Jif and Uncrustables, joined the project to find a solution. She started volunteering in 2021, following management’s encouragement to employees to do so. Zahara saw PFS as a good path to channel her expertise to help others.
The volunteer team first assessed GDL’s production process to find out what was causing the problems. They quickly deduced that the excessive heat being used during production - from the hot water used to wash the berries to hot temperatures during pasteurization - was contributing to the poor taste and color. Zahara and her team recommended chlorinated water for washing the berries and reducing the temperature of the pasteurization. They also helped GDL optimize their production by segregating spaces to prevent recontamination and made proposals to improve their recipe, pasteurization, and packaging processes. The team agreed that the sedimentation was more of an issue of consumer preference than a food safety issue and advised them to include instructions to “shake well” on the product’s label.
Due to this intervention, the gooseberry juice product pulled off shelves is now back on the market. While the juice still has some separation, the bottles no longer swell, and the juice has a significantly better taste and color. The product also has a longer shelf-life.
Based on the project recommendations, GDL plans to conduct homogenization trials with a homogenizer from an external party in the future. Their goal is to identify the best conditions to ensure that the juice has a smooth, uniform texture and does not separate over time. They will also source new packaging material and try vacuum filling for better results. The whole team enjoyed working together, and Gooseberry Delight is incredibly happy with the results of this project.
“This is my third project with PFS, and I keep coming back because I love volunteering. I get to learn about products I am not familiar with. It is also a great chance to network and learn from volunteers from other companies you are partnered with. There’s really this great sense of accomplishment knowing that I have been part of a team that has made a difference for another company,” says Zahara.