Development of an Egg fruit (Pouteria campechiana) and Winter melon (Benincasa hispida) Incorporated Jam.

Abstract

Egg fruit or canistel (Pouteria campechiana) is an edible fruit called as “Lavulu” and consider as an underutilized fruit which is fairly ignored compared to other tropical fruits. Ripen Egg fruit flesh is too dry and its stick to the gum and teeth. To enhance the flavor of Egg fruit should be processing to made value added product. This study investigated to develop an improved jam using Egg fruit with specific objectives such as; to evaluate the proximate compositions of prepared jam and to find out the best combination of Egg fruit for the jam preparation. The jam was modified with adding winter melon and then prepared five treatments such as; T1 (Egg fruit 25%: winter melon 75%), T2 (Egg fruit 50%: winter melon 50%), T3 (Egg fruit 75%: winter melon 25%), T4 (100% Egg fruit) and T5 (100% winter melon).Each treatment was replicated four times. Five sensory parameters of colour, texture, aroma, taste and overall acceptability were evaluated by a sensory panel using 5-point hedonic scale and data were analyzed by Friedman test. Processed Jam crude fiber, crude proteins, crude fat, Ash and moisture content were evaluated as proximate analysis. According to the sensory evaluation the egg fruit-based jam has significant effect on aroma and color in the sensory evaluation. In proximate analysis, moisture content of the produced jam was not significantly different when compared to other treatments. Crude protein percentage was significantly lowest in the T5 (Winter melon only) when compared to other treatments. Crude fiber percentage was significantly higher in the T4 (Egg fruit only) when compared to other treatments except T3 (Egg fruit: Winter melon; 75%:25%).Conclude that egg fruit incorporated jam is having more crude protein content and more crude fiber content, hence it is good in nutrition aspects. Also, there is no any significant difference in produced jam in every treatments hence replaced the winter melon based jam from the egg fruit based jam can increase the nutritional aspect of the jam. Further, this jam should be modified with another acceptable recipe to achieve better result.