VALUE ADDITION OF LAWULU BY DEVELOPING A MIXED FRUIT LEATHER

Abstract

Lawulu fruit is widely spread in home gardens and can see trees full with fruits in the fruiting season. It has been considered as a therapeutically and nutritionally important fruit in Ayruvedic medicine. The problem associated with Lawulu is lower consumption due to the unpleasant flavour. So it gets wasted every fruit season without consumption. Therefore this study was carried out to find out a productive method of preservation and, thereby popularization of the fruit. According to the trials and findings finally developed good quality mixed fruit leather from Lawulu with combination of banana, pineapple, mango and woodapples, with the ratio of 70%:30%, 75%:25%, 75%:25% and 80%:20% respectively. . The fruit purees were mixed with different ratios respectively and sweetened,acidified and dried to get thin leather sheets. To remove the unpleasant flavour from Lawulu, flesh was treated with citric acid solution prior to pureeing the pulp. The products were evaluated for physico-chemical properties by descriptive evaluation techniques. Out of the four mixed fruit leathers, the physico-chemical properties of banana mixed lawulu leather showed moisture as 18.5%, Total Soluble Solid as 59.6°, Titratable acidity as 0.196mg/100g, reducing sugar as 107.3mg/100g,vitamin C as 4.2mg/100g, ash as 0.46mg/100g and SO2 as 16.2 ppm. Sensory evaluation was carried out with twelve judges to select the best samples. Data of sensory evaluation was analyzed and there was a significant difference among those samples in terms of colour, aroma, texture, astringent, cheweness and overall acceptance. The Banana incorporated Lawulu leather showed the best performance as in terms of acceptance as well as other sensory properties over other three samples.Therefore this Banana fruit combination can be used for lawulu leather.