Quality changes in osmotically dehydrated banana var. ‘Robusta’ and ‘Ney Poovan’ as affected by syrup concentration and immersion time

Abstract

Banana is one of the most important fruit crops of India with an annual production of 264.7 lakh tonnes having great socio-economic significance. It is a highly perishable fruit suffers from high post harvest losses to an extent of about 20 to 40 %. Therefore, it is necessary to develop shelf stable value added products and the osmotically dehydrated slices have good potential. The inclusion of osmotic process in conventional dehydration has two major advantages of quality improvement and energy savings. ‘Robusta’ and ‘Ney Poovan’ cultivars varied in their slice recovery, size, TSS, acidity and sugar contents. Statistically significant variations were observed for moisture content, sugars, titrable acidity, NEB and sensory quality parameters of dehydrated slices. Osmotic pretreatment of 70°Brix syrup for 24 h resulted in maximum reducing sugar (53.78 %), non-reducing sugar (19.93 %) and total sugar (73.73 %) in banana slices. Samples from ‘Robusta’ had higher acidity (1.31 %) than the ‘Ney Poovan’ (1.00 %). However, osmotic pretreatment with 60°Brix sugar syrup for 24 h resulted in best quality products with a sensory score of 83.5 as compared to 65.0 in control. Osmotically dehydrated slices of ‘Robusta’ were significantly superior than ‘Ney Poovan’