Where is stevia grown?
Stevia is a subtropical, perennial plant which grows best in environments with long days of sunshine, warm temperatures with minimal frost, adequate rainfall and lots of sunshine. The stevia plant genus includes over 100 species, and is cultivated throughout the world, but most predominately in China, Paraguay, Kenya, Zambia and the United States.
Stevia is known as a hardy plant, and depending on the region it may be harvested several times per year. SOFER uses conventional breeding techniques to increase the sweet compounds found in the leaves of the plant (steviol glycosides). The extracts from the stevia plants, which are sold as sweeteners, are not genetically modified organisms (non-GMO).
Stevia farming provides a profitable crop for thousands of independent farmers of varying scales in Asia, South America, Africa and the United States. For some farmers, stevia is being cultivated as a cash crop on smaller plots of farmlands in addition to food crops for added income.
Stevia is a natural sweetener
The sweet components of the Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni plant called steviol glycosides, are extracted and purified to make high-purity stevia leaf extracts. Ensuring these sweet components are unchanged during the purification and extraction process is an important part of bringing stevia leaf extract from the leaf to the final product.
A study conducted at the University of Bonn in Germany explored what happens to these sweet components of the stevia leaf when they go through the extraction and purification process.2Due to the complex purification process, the natural authenticity or the “naturality” of high-purity stevia leaf extracts has been questioned. Thus, the objective of this study was to systematically determine if the steviol glycosides are modified during the commercial extraction and purification process used to produce high-purity stevia leaf extracts (i.e. steviol glycoside sweetener ingredients).
The researchers focused on the nine steviol glycosides approved in 2010 by the global regulatory authority, the Joint Food Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives(JECFA). These steviol glycosides were in the original steviol glycoside JECFA approval and specification for high-purity stevia leaf extract ingredients.The study investigated three commercial scale production batches of high-purity steviol glycosides. The samples for each commercial batch included the untreated stevia leaves from which the steviol glycosides are extracted, the first water infusion after the leaves have been steeped in warm water and the 95% high purity end product (i.e. the steviol glycoside sweetener ingredient). The samples were analyzed using ultra-violet, high-performance liquid chromatography (UV-HPLC) and high-performance liquid chromatography electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC/ESI-MS/MS) to separate, identify and quantify the individual steviol glycoside molecules. The commercial samples tested in the study were provided by PureCircle, from PureCircle’s commercial extraction and purification production process of high-purity stevia leaf sweetener ingredients/extracts.
The researchers reported their results clearly show the end product of extraction and purification i.e. the commercial steviol glycoside sweetener ingredients tested in this study, with an estimated purity of more than or equal to 95%, contain the same nine steviol glycosides as the dried untreated stevia leaves and their hot water infusions. This demonstrates steviol glycosides are not affected nor modified through multiple steps in the commercial extraction and purification process.These findings are significant because the fact the nine steviol glycosides in the end products remain unaltered and are identical to those in the intact stevia leaves provides support for the “naturality” or natural authenticity of high-purity stevia leaf extracts, also known as, high-purity stevia sweetener ingredients.