Drying Characteristics of Oven-Dried Sapodilla (Manilkara Zapota) Fruit Leather

Diong, Esther Li Ping (2018) Drying Characteristics of Oven-Dried Sapodilla (Manilkara Zapota) Fruit Leather. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

Text Diong Li Ping Esther_Full Text.pdf Restricted to Registered users only Download (1MB)

Abstract

Sapodilla (Manilkara zapota) is a highly perishable fruit and is currently being underutilized in Malaysia. Fruit leather is a low cost dehydration method to preserve the fruit. In this research, Sapodilla pulp was mixed with water, sugar, citric acid, corn starch and maltodextrin; spread on trays (2mm thickness) and dried in hot air oven at 80°C for 60 minutes. The objectives of this study are (i) to develop Sapodilla fruit leather by using hot air oven drier (ii) to investigate the effect of drying of product on physicochemical and antioxidant properties and (iii) to access the preference and acceptance level of developed Sapodilla fruit leather. Proximate analysis results showed that the fruit leather consist mainly of carbohydrate (77.28±3.91%), low crude protein (0.7±0.09%), crude fibre (1.82±0.09%) and crude ash (3.62±0.66%). The total moisture content (16.57±3.51%) of the fruit leather was low, with total soluble solids content of 28.57 oBrix, and pH of 3.55±0.01, suggesting that the product have acceptable storage stability. The vitamin C (12.87±0.9 mg/100g), total phenolic content (81.92 mg GAE/100g), total flavonoid content (19.90 mg CAE/100g) and DPPH radical scavenging capacity (5.96±3.02%) were observed to be reduced compared to that of fresh Sapodillas due to the high temperature used for drying (80oC). The result of sensory analysis using untrained panellist showed that the fruit leather was acceptable when compared to a commercial product. The fruit leather overall acceptability was 6.39±1.12. The commercial fruit leather (52%) showed a higher percentage compared to the sapodilla fruit leather (48%) for preference test.