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Science Of The Pawpaw
< < Back toOn this edition of Conversations from Studio B, host Kelee Riesbeck talks with Dr. Robert Brannan, a food scientist and associate professor in the School of Applied Health Sciences and Wellness in the College of Health Science and Professions at Ohio University.
In recent years, Dr. Brannan has focused his scholarly studies on the Appalachian native Pawpaw fruit.
Dr. Brannan’s work was recently featured in an article in the Fall/Winter 2012 issue of the Ohio University research magazine Perspectives, entitled, “The Promise of the Pawpaw: Can Food Scientists Turn a Native Fruit into Supermarket Friendly Products?”
“When I first got here, it just sort of hits you that the Pawpaw is here. So I started to learn about it, and we went to the festival for the first time, and as I looked at the scientific literature I realized that there was very little scientific information on the Pawpaw, it was just not well studied. And so that’s sort of a gold mine for a scientist, because if you think about any other botanical around the world there’s a lot of research on it – and the Pawpaw was just sitting in our backyard, and we have this incredibly successful festival, and there was no research on it”, says Dr. Brannan.
For more information on Perspectives magazine and Dr. Brannan’s work, visit www.ohio.edu/research/communications/perspectives.cfm