Osmotic Dehydration of Fruits

Introduction

Fruits in general contain more than 75% water and get spoiled very quickly, if not stored properly. Even proper storage fails to preserve the fruits for a long period unless they are dehydrated. The osmotic dehydration techniques not only enables the storage of the fruits for a longer period, but also preserves flavor , nutritional characteristics and prevents microbial spoilage. Apart from this, problems of marketing, handling and transport becomes much simpler and all types of fruits could be made available to the consumer throughout the year. Osmotic dehydration can remove 50% of the water from fresh ripe fruits e.g. bananas, mangoes, sapotas, papayas, apples and other tropical fruits. The final drying of these osmotic dehydrated fruits by vacuum drying provides a product which has good quality, attributes with respect to appearance, taste, flavor and colour as compared to sun drying. The product is suitable as a ready to eat snack item. Also the dehydrated product could be powdered if desired, and mixed with milk powder for making other products and confectionery items. The process of dehydration consists of three steps i) Osmotic dehydration, ii) Vacuum or air drying, iii) Packaging. In osmotic dehydration, the fruits are subjected to osmosis by dipping or spreading them in a aqueous sugar syrup under specific conditions, so that the water from the fruits migrates to sugar syrup. Major dehydration of the fruit takes place in this process step. The final drying of the fruits to make it suitable for marketing is carried out by vacuum or air drying depending on the cost considerations.

For further information please contact

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre,
Trombay, Mumbai- 400 085
Tel : 091-022-25505337/25593897
Fax : 091-022-25505151
Email : headttcd@barc.gov.in