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Los Angeles [US], (ANI): Researchers at the University of Bristol have discovered that blueberries’ blue color comes from tiny exterior structures in their wax coating.
This applies to many fruits of the same color, such as damsons, sloes, and juniper berries.
The finding, published in Science Advances, explains why blueberries appear blue despite the dark red pigments on their skin.
Their blue color is generated by a layer of wax that surrounds the fruit and is composed of microscopic structures that scatter blue and UV light.This gives blueberries their blue color to humans and blue-UV to birds.
The chromatic blue-UV reflectance results from the interaction of the epicuticular wax’s randomly organized crystal structures with light.
Rox Middleton, Research Fellow at Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences, explained, “The blue of blueberries can’t be ‘extracted’ by squishing – because it isn’t located in the pigmented juice that can be squeezed from the fruit. That was why we knew that there must be something strange about the colour.”
