Wild medicinal berries face growing threats from climate change
Zaman W, Zafar M, Amin A
Medicinal Plants
The bilberries or elderberries you might forage on a forest walk owe their potency to the exact hillside, altitude, and soil they grew in, so losing that habitat means losing the berry as we know it.
Forest berries such as bilberries, elderberries, and other wild fruits contain natural compounds that can support heart health, brain function, and the immune system. But how much of these good compounds a berry has depends heavily on its species, the forest it grows in, the altitude, climate, and even how it's handled after picking. Scientists are now warning that climate change, deforestation, and overharvesting threaten to shrink both where these berries grow and how healthy they end up being.
Key Findings
Medicinal forest berries owe their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, cardiometabolic, neuroprotective, and gut-health benefits to compounds like anthocyanins, flavonoids, phenolic acids, carotenoids, and lignans
Berry chemical composition varies significantly with species identity, forest type, altitude, climate, soil, phenology, and postharvest handling across boreal, temperate, tropical, Mediterranean, montane, and alpine ecosystems
Climate change, habitat fragmentation, land-use change, and unsustainable harvesting threaten berry distribution, yield, and phytochemical content, prompting calls for in situ/ex situ conservation, domestication, agroforestry, eDNA monitoring, and field metabolomics
chevron_right Technical Summary
Wild forest berries like bilberries and elderberries pack antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds that shift based on where and how they grow, but climate change, habitat loss, and overharvesting are putting these wild food sources at risk.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Resilient forest remedies: biochemical diversity, health benefits, and conservation of medicinal berries in changing ecosystems.
Forest berries are valuable bioactive food resources that link plant biodiversity, food quality, nutrition, and sustainable use. Many medicinal forest berries contain anthocyanins, flavonoids, phen...
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Bilberry, also known as European blueberry, is a Eurasian low-growing shrub in the genus Vaccinium of the flowering plant family Ericaceae native to northern Europe and North America. Vaccinium myrtillus L. is the species most commonly called bilberry, but other closely related Vaccinium species ...