Edible flowers: Review of flower processing and extraction of bioactive compounds by novel technologies

Edible flowers have a long history of consumption in the form of vegetable flowers, fruit flowers or aromatic flowers. Because of their colorful and flavorful nature, edible flowers are believed to contain various nutritional and bioactive components. Today, people are advocating to eat nutritious food and paying attention to healthy foods, flower foods have become a new fashion diet trend. Although edible flowers have great sensory attraction, they have not used in food yet as widely as fresh vegetables and fruits have. The extremely short shelf-life limits the commercial use of edible flowers. In order to find some novel processing technologies which can extend the shelf-life and ensure the commercial use of flowers, we summarized the data of more than 100 studies performed until now on edible flowers. This review concludes emerging technologies including modified atmosphere packaging, high hydrostatic pressure, irradiation and edible coating to keep flower fresh, drying technologies including microwave drying, freeze drying and hybrid drying to maintain the optimal state of flower materials, as well as different extraction methods to extract the bioactive compounds and the microencapsulation of these compounds.