What can you do with avocado seeds? Penn State researchers develop a colorful solution

Occasionally, when you’re looking for a solution to one problem, you get lucky enough to stumble upon a solution for an even bigger and more pressing issue. For Penn State professor Greg Ziegler, this was what happened with AvoColor, a product he developed after inadvertently discovering some previously unknown avocado seed properties.

Robert Hicks, CEO of Persea Naturals, said it was about 15 years ago that Ziegler was doing a simple experiment with an avocado seed and put it in a blender with a little water.

“It was supposed to oxidize, so just mix with air and water and turn brown, like most fruits do. It turned bright orange. He was hoping to do some experiments — maybe this could be a new starch to sell — but no one likes orange starch. All starches are white in the market,” Hicks said.

Over the course of several years, Ziegler, a professor of food science at Penn State, also discovered the bright orange substance was very strong — once it touched something, it wasn’t coming out — and that his simple experiment had created a new chemical compound that previously had not been identified nor patented. Additionally, the substance wasn’t only useful as a strong orange dye; it also worked in yellow and red hues.

“Twenty years ago, people in the United States weren’t eating avocados. We weren’t aware of avocados and research wasn’t being done on avocados or avocado seeds. It was good timing. This new consumer edible came into the market and Greg happened to do this experiment,” Hicks said.

Ziegler presented his findings to several other Penn State professors, who then became his business partners, forming Persea Naturals. Along with the Penn State Research Foundation, they filed patent applications in the United States, Europe, Canada and Mexico. Penn State licensed the technology to Persea Naturals and, now, the team is hoping to use their unique product to not only address a $2.5 billion food color market, but also a growing waste issue stemming from increasing demand for avocado-based products.

“Most of the food colorants we use are red, yellow or orange, just because those are the colors we like to eat. So blues, purples, browns — we don’t really color our foods those colors. If they’re natural, that’s fine, but we don’t try to get to those colors. So probably 60% of that $2.5 billion market is addressable by our product,” Hicks said.

Currently, Persea Naturals is in the process of obtaining FDA approval and it recently received a USDA grant to support the commercialization of AvoColor. However, while awaiting FDA approval and completing the necessary studies to prove the product’s safety, Persea Naturals has been working with major international food companies to test other elements of AvoColor, such as how it stands up to different environments and how suitable it might be for various food applications. The results, Hicks says, are very positive and the companies are finding many aspects of AvoColor that put the product above other natural food colorants currently available.

“The issue (food companies) have right now is that existing natural colors use spices and vegetables and fruits and they’re very expensive and they fade,” Hicks said. “They don’t last long on the shelf. Ours doesn’t fade. It’s not made from a fruit or a vegetable, it’s made from a seed that’s being landfilled in California in tremendous numbers by guacamole producers and avocado oil producers.”

In addition to being more stable and able to withstand heat, light and oxygen in ways other natural colorants cannot, AvoColor is also more desirable to food companies who might be using artificial colors, as consumers demand the removal of artificial dyes from popular food items.

Even better, AvoColor can make direct use of waste from companies producing avocado-based products. Major guacamole companies, for example, generally send their avocado seeds to a landfill, an estimated 30,000 tons of avocado seeds annually. Sending those seeds to Persea Naturals versus the landfill allows the producer to boast a zero-waste facility.

If all goes well with Persea Naturals’s FDA approval, Hicks says it’s likely companies will want to license the technology and obtain use of certain shades of AvoColor. One of the biggest industries where he can foresee AvoColor as useful is within the drink industry, both soft drinks and fruit-based drinks.

However, Persea Naturals has its sights set on products beyond food colorants. Research shows, Hicks says, even more purposes for avocado seeds.

“Now what we’re saying is, we’re not just a color company, we’re going to find a total use for this seed,” he said.

They even, he says, might go back to the original idea that started it all — a starch product.