Status of technological developments in processing of Aonla fruits and seeds: Review

Abstract

India is second largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the world and is leader in various fruits and vegetables area and production. Due to perishable nature of horticultural produce their value addition is the prime necessity to preserve them for long time at the time of glut and to make them available in off season. Their processing needs advanced mechanization and new processing methodology to be developed for ease of harvesting, handling, processing and storage to reduce the human drudgery. India ranks first in the area under production and productivity of aonla or Indian gooseberry (Emblica officinalis Gaertn). It belongs to genus Emblica of the family Euphorbiaceae and order Euphorbiales. It is well known Indian fruit for its medicinal and therapeutic properties from the ancient time in India. Aonla fruit is perishable and thus needs to be processed after few days of harvesting or else immediate marketing of raw a fruit is required. Raw aonla fruit is not much acceptable by consumers because of its high acidic nature and its astringent taste. But the aonla products like candy, supari, pickle, preserve, Triphala and chavaprash are very famous and have huge demand in the market because of their health benefits. Wide research has been carried out for development of equipment and machineries for aonla processing. Present article contains review of different technologies like aonla stone removing machine, aonla pricking machine, manual aonla stone removing cum slicing machine, aonla segmenting machine and aonla punching machine available for processing of aonla fruits.