Processing of fruits and vegetables for its juicing: A Review

Abstract

Fruits and vegetable are important sources of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, phytochemicals and salts required for human nutrition in daily diet. Current food trend toward healthier diets makes fruit and vegetable juices consumption an important natural food alternative and improves the availability of its nutritive compounds. These commodities have higher edible index, which proves its importance for processing. By adopting some of the modern juice processing technologies after harvest, a significant portion at present that was getting spoilt can be salvaged. However, fruit and vegetable juices in its pure form have some typical colour, off-flavour and unpleasant taste due to their chemical compositions. Organoleptic quality of such fruit and vegetable blended juices could be increased by addition of spice extracts having anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties. The presence of residual endogenous enzymes in fruit and vegetable which may cause quality changes hence required adequate thermal processing. Processing of juices by heat for a sufficient time is highly essential to kill micro-organisms which cause spoilage during storage period. Formulation and blending enables retaining more colour, consistency, fresh flavour and ascorbic acid content of juice products. The present review focuses on the various technical aspects of blanching of fruits and vegetables, formulations, blending, thermal processing and storage characteristics or the production of blended juices, RTS beverages and health drinks.