It's grape expectations for health-boosting Boombites

Matt Nixson on the creation of a superfood grape packed with extra antioxidants to fend off heart disease

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A new variety of red berry grapes marketed as Boombites are about to help revolutionise our snacking.

They are black outside and deep red inside - and it’s this that accounts for their health-boosting nutritional profile.

Their colour is down to high levels of anthocyanins, the powerful antioxidant which also makes blueberries blue and which gives them their superfood status. But the new red berry grapes not only have antioxidant levels on a par with blueberries, they are also rich in resveratrol - another health-enhancing anti-inflammatory antioxidant.

Resveratrol is thought to explain what's known as the 'French paradox' - the fact that France has very low rates of heart disease despite the population's diet being laden with saturated fats and often washed down with wine.

The new Boombites were created by crossing old varieties of wine grapes, which have red flesh and high levels of resveratrol, with some of the world's tastiest varieties of the fruit. It took thousands of different combinations of small and soft wine grapes with large, sweet, and crunchy seedless table grapes to create the red berry version.

The crossbreeding process involves removing the male part from the flowers of one parent plant before they have a chance to produce pollen, and then using a fine brush to transfer pollen from the other parent plant. It's so painstaking that Bloom Fresh, the agricultural innovators behind the new grapes, often employ people who worked as embroiderers to carry out this specialist pollination process.

Once they're pollinated, the immature bunches are then covered to prevent airborne pollen from any other grape variety disrupting the process.