Review of recent advances on health benefits, microbial transformations, and authenticity identification of Citri reticulatae Pericarpium bioactive compounds

Abstract

The extensive health-promoting effects of Citri Reticulatae Pericarpium (CRP) have attracted researchers’ interest. The difference in storage time, varieties and origin of CRP are closely related to the content of bioactive compounds they contain. The consitituent transformation mediated by environmental microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) and the production of new bioactive components during the storage process may be the main reason for ‘the older, the better’ of CRP. In addition, the gap in price between different varieties can be as large as 8 times, while the difference due to age can even reach 20 times, making the ‘marketing young-CRP as old-CRP and counterfeiting origin’ flood the entire market, seriously harming consumers’ interests. However, so far, the research on CRP is relatively decentralized. In particular, a summary of the microbial transformation and authenticity identification of CRP has not been reported. Therefore, this review systematically summarized the recent advances on the main bioactive compounds, the major biological activities, the microbial transformation process, the structure, and content changes of the active substances during the transformation process, and authenticity identification of CRP. Furthermore, challenges and perspectives concerning the future research on CRP were proposed.

Graphical abstract

Keywords:

• Authenticity identification
• bioactive compounds
• biological activities
• Citri Reticulatae Pericarpium
• microbial transformations
• Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Program for Guangdong Introducing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Teams (2019ZT08N291 to J. Xiao), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31801505 to M. Song), and Basic and Applied Basic Research Fund of Guangdong Province (22201910240002498 to Q. Wang).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Qun Wang and Zhenyuan Qiu: Investigation, Writing-original draft, Review, and Editing. Yilu Chen, Aimei Zhou, Yong Cao and Yuqing Song: Information gathering and Data handling. Mingyue Song and Hang Xiao: Investigation, Review, Editing, and Supervision.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no competing financial interests to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supportted by the Program for Guangdong Introducing Innovative and Entrepreneurial Teams (2019ZT08N291 to J. Xiao), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31801505 to M. Song), and Basic and Applied Basic Research Fund of Guangdong Province (22201910240002498 to Q. Wang).