Food Processing of Date Palm Fruits in Sinai

Abstract

The date is one of the most important crops cultivated in Egypt as a result of the suitable conditions to its cultivation, so there is a large area was cultivated by dates. The exported dates of Egypt were less than 1% of the total production, the Egyptian dates divided into three types (soft date, semi dry date, and dry date). North Sinai region is one of the most important date cultivated areas in Egypt, where the cultivated date varieties are Hayany date (soft dates) which spread in El-Arish city and Amry dates (semi dry dates) which spread in Beir El-Abed city. The soft date was the highest moisture content so it decays quickly so that it could be preserved by using different methods of drying such as solar, sun and greenhouse drying, to produce some products such as dry date and date pastes. Date fruit has a high content of sugar, while its content of protein and fat is very low, so we try to support date fruit by different sources of protein (dried skim milk, sesame, peanut, and soybean) to improve the nutritional and caloric values of date either Hayany or Amry date. In the same time, coconut and cinnamon were added to each variety product as flavors to produce date cubes.