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PROCESSING & VALUE ADDITION OF JACK FRUIT

PROCESSING & VALUE ADDITION OF JACK FRUIT

Jack fruit, the biggest organic fruit, is one among the highly neglected food resources of the country. It is a zero attention crop with high productivity. About 60 to 70 percent of Jack fruit grown are wasted every year. There is limited documentation on value added products, recipes and excellent jack varieties that are suitable for table purpose, vegetable, and processing.

 

Jack fruit provides various macro-micro nutrients needed for the human body. It is referred as the poor man’s food as well as “Nutrient of the giants” due to its nutrient composition.

 

The main issues of its underutilization are:

 

  • Wastage of available Jack fruit during season in villages due to lack of processing skills, storage facilities, and improper harvesting.
  • Lack of awareness on the potentials of jack fruit for processing and value addition.
  • Lack of need based research on this local resource to ensure food & nutrition security.
  • Unavailability of appropriate and women friendly technologies for cutting, processing, storage, and value addition, especially in the villages.

 

Mitraniketan with the support of DST implemented a project to promote jackfruits and its value addition for Livelihood security among Kanikkar tribal community. Under the project we have created awareness on the importance of jack fruits and the possibilities of its processing, storage and value addition among the Kanikkar women targeted. We could develop skills of 200 women in processing / semi-processing activities like pulping, dehydrating and brine; and value addition of jack fruit. We have linked with the University of Agricultural Sciences (BLR) for technology adoption. With the support of DST we could establish a Nodal centre (processing unit) with required machines and tools for training and value addition at Mitraniketan.

 

A variety of products developed from Jack fruit in the Nodal centre, and transferred its technology to trained women who inturn started 3 Jackfruit processing units in the THOLICODU PANCHAYTH. The Processing unit at Mitraniketan and the Micro enterprises at the villages produce and market value added products. Mitraniketan continues to give Training and technical support to initiate Semi processing units in Jack Fruit.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY IN PROCESSING:

Mitraniketan availed license from University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore for the technical knowhow of the following 5 Jack fruit based value added products:

  1. Tender Jack fruit for Use as Vegetable,
  2. Ready to Serve Jack Fruit Juice,
  3. Jack fruit Peda,
  4. Jack Fruit Ice cream, and
  5. Jack Fruit Jam.

The S & T components are given below:

Tender Jack fruit for Use as Vegetable Tender and immature green fruits with young seeds are mainly used for vegetable to prepare curries/side dishes. The shelf life of Ready To Cook (RTC) product is only for a day at room temperature. The problem in RTC is browning; blanching prevents browning.
PROTOCOL for minimally processed Ready-To-Cook (RTC) tender jackfruit (from University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru):

  1. Wash green jackfruit with 1-2% Potassium meta-bisulphite
  2. Removal of  outer rind
  3. Wash with hot water with 1 – 2 % KMS
  4. Cutting into required pieces
  5. Blanching with 0.5% KMS and 4-5% citric acid
  6. Air drying
  7. Packaging and storage
Ready to Serve Jack Fruit Juice

 

JACK FRUIT JUICE  is the most popular fruit beverage drink and contains 10% fruit juice/pulp, 10% total soluble solids (Brix) and 0.3% acidity with 70 ppm sulphur dioxide(potassium meta-bisulphite) or 120ppm benzoic acid (sodium benzoate).
Process PROTOCOL for the preparation of jackfruit JUICE

  1. Ripe de-seeded jack fruit bulbs
  2. Blanching in hot water
  3. Mashed in a blender to get pulp
  4. Blend pulp, water, sugar and citric acid
  5. Heating  @ 85-90 degree C for 10-15 min
  6. Cooling and filtration
  7. Addition of KMS
  8. Filling into sterilized glass bottles and cork sealing
  9. Pasteurization (80-85 degree C) for 20 min
  10. Labeling and storage.
Jack Fruit Peda Process PROTOCOL for the preparation of jackfruit PEDA

  1. Ripe JF pulp
  2. Addition of sugar and khova
  3. Heating
  4. Kneading
  5. Cooling

6. Packaging and storage

Jack Fruit Icecream 1. Selection of ingredients (sugar, milk, cream/butter, skim milk powder, stabilizer, emulsifier)
2. Figuring of mix.
3. Heat treatment
4. Two stage homogenization
5. Cooling and aging
6. Adding Jackfruit pulp (25%) of mix)
7. Freezing
8. Packing
9. Hardening
10. Storage
Jack Fruit Jam

 

1. Peeling and deseeding of Jackfruit
2. Deseeded JF bulb
3. Blending in grinder to get pulp
4. Addition of sugar and citric acid
5. Heating and stirring reach 60o brix
6. Addition of KMS @ 200 ppm
7. Required sheet consistency
8. Packing and storage

 

Processing techniques involved:

The processing techniques involved are the standard procedure used in other processing centers too. It preserves nutrient loss to its maximum level just like in all fruits and vegetables. Little nutrient loss especially vitamin c is normal in all storaging and cooking methods. Minimal processing adopted in jack fruit can protect the nutrient loss because only KMS is used. Dehydration technique is also enhance the shelf life and preserve nutrient loss. The advantages of these food processing techniques are long shelf life, minimum loss of nutrients, and least loss of dietary fibers.

Jack fruit preserved in dehydrated form:

The efficacy of jack fruit preserved in dehydrated form is 1 year, which has been tried out. We have conducted a study on the acceptability of Jack Fruit products, which shows that 70% of the respondents accepted using Jack Fruit Products in dehydrated form. As Jack fruit is a seasonal fruit, there is demand for dehydrated jack fruit as vegetable as well for other value addition.