Development of process technology for preparation of watermelon jaggery
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Date
2022
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Abstract
Watermelon is a nutritious alternative to energy drinks as it is a natural source
of phenolic antioxidants; amino acid, carotenoid lycopene, vitamin A, potassium and
magnesium. Watermelon biomass composed of four main components - flesh, peel,
rind and seed. About one-third of the watermelon weight is comprised by its rind.
Due to the rind's lack of sweetness, it is discarded as waste. Large quantities of
watermelons are lost due to poor post-harvest techniques a huge volume of
watermelons get damaged, spoilt, discarded and left on field itself by cultivars due to
its low in brix value which fetches a very low price in market. The fruit can be used at
this point of time for preparing the value added products from the watermelon which
will fetch higher income to the farmers. Watermelon juice possesses similar chemical
properties to that of sugarcane juice and possibility of preparation of jaggery from
watermelon need was explored.
The process of preparation of watermelon jaggery was studied by the
Response Surface Methodology (RSM) using Box-Behnken Design. In this design,
the low and high levels of the process variables were 10.00 and 15.00 % for rind
content; 5 to 10 % (w/w) for binding agent; 7.5 -12.5 %w/w for sweetening agent,
respectively. Responses studied comprised jaggery processing time, jaggery yield,
moisture content, TSS pH, reducing sugar, non-reducing sugar, colour index, hardness
and overall acceptability. The optimum conditions (desirability of 0.738) obtained by
numerical optimization were of rind content 14.33 % (w/w), binding agent 9.86 %
(w/w) and sweetening agent 12.50 %( w/w) to achieve minimum jaggery processing
time, moisture content, reducing sugar and colour index and maximum jaggery yield
TSS, pH, non-reducing sugar, hardness and overall acceptability. Corresponding to
the optimum conditions, optimized yield as jaggery yield- 6.13 %, jaggery processing
time- 236.54 minutes, moisture content- 25.11 (%, w.b.), TSS (ºBrix)-75.55, pH-
6.01, reducing sugar- 2.07%, non-reducing sugar- 1.71 %, colour- 42.42, hardness-
35.32 N, overall acceptability- 8.16. The optimised watermelon jaggery was
acceptable for consumption during 60 days storage period w.r.t. coliform and total
plate count.