Vol. 10, Issue 7 (2021)

Author(s):
Akanksha Shrivastava, SG Bharad and DM Panchbhai

Abstract:
The most important factors for a healthy diet are nutrients which must be present in sufficient quantity and quality to provide nutritional and caloric balance in a balanced combination. Annona species are highly rich in bioactive compounds but the hurdles such as short season availability, chilling injury during storage as whole fruit, off flavour and colour development during conventional processing methods can setback their high nutritional and pharmacological potential. Hence, an investigation has been conducted for two consecutive years 2017-18 and 2018-19, where the Annona species viz., Annona squamosa L. and Annona atemoya pulp was extracted, as minimally processed pulp has properties quite similar to the fresh fruits; however, this also has side-effect as being more susceptible to spoilage and deterioration in quality than the other processed products. With the intent of increasing the shelf life of such minimally processed pulp with minimum deterioration in quality, both species pulp was stored under freezing conditions at -20 ⁰C for eight months and evaluated for assessing the influence of low temperature and duration of storage on bioactive compounds of both species individually. The storage of Annona species pulp in the frozen form given positive results in terms of maintaining the quality of pulp with minimum losses concerning to physico-chemical and sensory characteristics. The Annona atemoya species responded comparatively better to the storage conditions than Annona squamosa L. species. Although, the ascorbic acid and antioxidant activity varied significantly; however, as the storage progressed, the variation rate reduced, leading to minimize losses in the quality.