Osmotic dehydration of bottle gourd (Legeneria siceraria)

Abstract

Osmotic dehydration of fruits and vegetables an effective method for preservation. The Bottle gourd (Legeneria siceraria) belongs to Cucurbitaceous family. Average composition of fresh bottle gourd is constituted by water (96.0%), carbohydrates (2.5%), fibre (0.6%), proteins (0.2%) and calcium (20mg). The bottle gourd is a common vegetable in India subcontinental. It is moderately perishable vegetable. In this report, efforts were made to analyze the effect of different concentration, temperature and mass ratio of fruit to osmotic solution on osmotic dehydration process of bottle gourd cubes. comparative study for different parameters variables (solid gain weight reduction, water loss) was also studies. Five concentration levels of salt solution were 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25% (w/w) used in this study to compare the effect of the concentration of the osmotic agents on osmotic dehydration. Bottle gourd cubes were immersed in the osmotic reagents with a fruit to osmotic solution mass ratio of 10:1, 20:1 and 30:1 soaking experiment were conducted at 40, 50 and 600C in a 500 mi capacity water bath. The osmotic dehydration was done for a period of 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 h and replicated thrice. Quality analysis of osmotically dehydrated bottle gourd cubes was done according to ISI (1971) and Ranganna (1991) with 9-point hedonic scale. The moisture content of bottle gourd cubes observed decreases with higher concentration, temperature and mass ratio. The weight reduction, water loss and solid gain were very fast during initial period of osmosis but equilibrium did reach even after 9h. The solid gain, water loss and weight reduction were observed higher for higher temperature, concentration and mass ratio of bottle gourd cubes. The sensory evaluation performed for the approximately central conditions processing parameters gave average scores of 7 or above.