Study on effect of osmotic dehydration on marking nut fruit

Abstract

Marking nut is one of the underutilized minor crop growing wildly in our country. This fruit has got great medicinal properties and health benefits. But its importance is not completely understood and the fruits go waste. Therefore, it is necessary to develop value added products and the osmotically dehydrated fruits have good potential. The inclusion of osmotic process in conventional dehydration has two major advantages of quality improvement and energy savings. There was a significant difference found in the samples prepared from different pretreatments of osmotic dehydration. Osmotic pretreatment T3 (Sucrose 60o Brix. + 18 hrs of immersion + Drying at 60 oC) had a great influence on quality and organoleptic properties of the fruits with maximum solid gain (86.40%), carbohydrates (75.78%) and minimum scores for moisture (13.60%). Also the highest scores for organoleptic parameters like color (4), appearance (4), texture (3.75) and taste (3.75) were recorded in same sample.