Deep blue. The solution was in the rainforest

How to develop the elusive, 100% natural food dye blue? Not only that, how to obtain a reliable tincture that does not modify the flavor and does not degrade in intensity?

A natural alternative, instead of the debated blue dyes derived from oil.

Much thought Nicolás Cock Duque, co-founder of Ecoflora SAS, on how to achieve it, until one day I trust his intuition.

"Blue is very scarce in nature, but one of the few exceptions is an Asian flower that has the same component of tropical fruit of Colombia's biodiversity, " says Cock Duque.

This Asian flower is the gardenia jasminoide. At present, natural food dyes of blue color are produced with it, but they are unstable at high temperatures and in solutions of acid pH, widely used by the food industry, according to a study by the chemistry division of the European Federation of Research and Technology. Food

But it was in the Colombian tropical jungle where Cock Duque would find the answer. There, a fruit called Genipa Americana, better known as the Fruit of Jagua, would give what Asian gardenia did not finish offering: a deep blue, robust, insipid and colorless.

"In the native biodiversity, we find the Holy Grail that they had been looking for so long to complete the palette of natural colors. At the time of the discovery, we were immediately convinced of the possibility of bringing it to the world, but we never imagined the time it would take us, "explains Cock Duque.

Paradoxically, it was not the chemical process -which can be summarized as the intervention of fruit juice with amino acid- to which Cook Duque refers, but the eternal and complex processes for its approval in the US market.

It has been 10 years since Ecoflora SAS was able to synthesize the dye, but the approval process of the federal agency of foods of the United States (FDA, for its acronym in English) is what has delayed the entry of this dye to one of the most important markets in the world. 

Pending approval, which is in its final stages, according to Cock Duque, Ecoflora SAS already commercializes its product in Colombia and Eastern Europe.

"The impact of this product and this project are going to be enormous. We dream of bringing the spirit of the tropical forest to the mouth and to the bodies of millions of people who will be consumers of healthier, more sustainable products, inspired and developed from the sustainable and intelligent use of biodiversity ", says Cock Duque.

International patents and permits are not the only challenges for Ecoflora SAS. The company faces another difficulty: the harvest of the fruit itself. The narrow and zigzagging mountain roads make access to almost 1,100 trees for harvesting extremely complex.

Once there, reapers select a score of trees with a good amount of fruit. A harvester performs the complex climbing with harnesses and pulleys, selects the fruits by maturity and size and finally the tomb. 

Once on the ground, another collector packs the fruits in sacks and specifically marks which tree each fruit comes from, with the aim of obtaining a traceability code, which will then allow Ecoflora SAS to study the productivity of each tree.

"We are not talking about agriculture. 

We are talking about gathering wild trees, which are in the communities, which are not owned by the company, but by the peasants who have their trees in the paddocks and in the stubble. 

The communities collect the fruit. The communities are the ones that develop the capacities to dispatch it and Ecoflora SAS allies with them to buy them that fruit and generate an additional income option for the families, "says Sergio Arango, manager of supply chains of Ecoflora SAS.

"This is a regenerating fruit of life, a tree that helps the establishment of new trees, of new ecosystems. 

We work hand in hand with the Afro-Colombian and Campesino indigenous communities, with their prior and informed consent, legally working on access to the fruit, complying with the requirements of the governmental environmental authorities, complying with the Nagoya Protocol, which is an international agreement that guarantees that what we do is not biopiracy, but is fair and ethical biocommerce, "concludes Cock Duque.

For Ecoflora SAS, this dye is just the beginning. As blue is a primary color, it allows you to create a variety of colors that are released from its combination with other primary dyes, so that your commercial possibilities multiply. 

In addition, Ecoflora SAS already develops a green pigment - also from the jagua fruit - as versatile and strong as blue, with which it hopes to compete seriously with other companies that have already developed it.

Once again, the solution was in the Pachamama.