Post-harvest characterisation and value addition of sweet lovi-lovi fruits (Flacourtia spp.)

Abstract

Sweet lovi-lovi, belongs to Flacourtiaceae family is an underexploited fruit having nutritive, therapeutic and medicinal values. But it has not being utilized for its full potential, hence an attempt has been made in this study. Sweet lovi-lovi accessions belonging to Flacourtia cataphracta and Flacourtia montana, were evaluated for physico-morphological and biochemical parameters and the suitability of these fruits to develop ready to serve beverage (RTS), preserve and wine were analysed. The physico-morphological and bio-chemical characters showed significant variation among the accessions. The desirable post-harvest qualities like high fruit weight, pulp percentage, less seed content along with highest total sugar (12.81%), non-reducing sugar (1.33%), anthocyanin (0.04 mg 100g⁻¹), carotenoid (582.55 mg 100g⁻¹), iron (33.23 mg 100g⁻¹), crude fibre (2.92 g 100g⁻¹) and lowest tannin (0.21 mg 100g⁻¹) was observed in Accession no.2. Wine, preserve and RTS beverage prepared from sweet lovi-lovi (Flacourtia spp.) accessions according to FSSAI specifications was found to have good acceptability. The overall acceptability of sweet lovi-lovi wine and preserve increased during storage of three months whereas, the RTS beverage showed a reducing trend in overall acceptability during entire storage period.