Development of blended RTS from pomegranate and grapes

Abstract

Pomegranate is a commercially important fruit grown throughout the world. Its juice makes a delicious drink which is very nutritious, and useful due to its medicinal value. Juice blending not only improves quality and nutrition of basic raw material, but also offers to develop the new product. In this context highly nutritious pomegranate juice is blended with grapes in different ratio and they are analysed for variation in pH, ascorbic acid, anthocyanin, sugars and total antioxidant activity after blending. Blended RTS with 50 per cent pomegranate and 50 per cent grapes was found to be the best in terms of its sensory attributes like colour, flavour, taste and overall acceptability and in terms of biochemical composition consisting of 13°Brix TSS, 3.63 pH, 1.62mg/100 ml ascorbic acid, 2.95 mg/100 ml anthocyanin and 6.75 mg AEAC/100 ml antioxidants. Nutritional properties of the blended RTS increased with the addition of pomegranate indicating that the blending of pomegranate with other fruits increases its health benefiting properties.