Vol. 12, Issue 7 (2023)

Dragon fruit is one of the newly introduced and emerging super-exotic fruit crops in India. It is a good source of Vitamin-C, water-soluble fibres and antioxidants. Dragon fruit peel is the major by-product left over from either fresh consumption or food processing. The dragon fruit peel may contain some natural pigment like pectin. It is a good food supplement for making fruit leather. Hence, dragon fruit pulp heated with extracted peel water increases the stability of the dragon fruit leather. The leather was prepared by using white flesh dragon fruit pulp and sugar in different combinations as (10, 20, 30, 40 and 50%) as per the statistical design of RSM. The prepared homogeneous mixture was dried in a mechanical dryer at different temperatures (55, 60, 65, 70 & 75 ºC) and thicknesses (2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 mm). It may be concluded that the optimized dragon fruit leather having the formulation of peel: Sugar: Temperature: Thickness was found as 20%: 40%: 60 ºC: 5 mm, respectively, which is extremely useful for satisfying consumer tastes and preference and optimized sample having Vitamin C of 21.1 mg/100g and Overall acceptability of 7.59.