Fruit cheese has recently become very popular. It is a confection of the type of Karachi halwa and is prepared from fruits like Guava, Apple, Pear and Plum. Fruit cheeses have a long shelf life (Srivastava and Kumar, 2007). Fruit cheese contains a minimum 68% T.S.S. and 45% prepared fruit in final product, (F.P.O Specification). Fruit cheese are made from a stiff fruit puree. This is a good way of preserving fruit which has a lot of pips or stones. They use a larger portion of sugar to puree than fruit butters. fruit cheeses can be turned out in one piece and cut with knife in place of cheese or, cut into small pieces, as a sweetmeat.
Preparation of guava sapota cheese:
Materials required:
1.Guava pulp -500g
2.Sapota pulp-500g
3.Butter -40g
4.Sugar-150g
5.Citric acid -2g
Preparation Method/Technology:
Select firmly ripe Guava fruits wash with clean water and then cut into pieces. After that boil it with 300ml of water/kg of guava, till the pieces becomes soft then, either sieve in a muslin cloth or in a pulping machine to remove seeds and skin to make a fine pulp.Select fully riped sapota fruits peel it and then remove the seeds after that cut into pieces and then grind it to make the fine pulp. Take each 500g of guava and sapota pulp and cook it for 5-10min after that add sugar and butter to the pulp again cook it for 10min then add citric acid after that judge the end point . Evenly distributed the mixture over butter coated tray and left it for 3 hours to set. After that packed in a polythene bag and stored at ambient temperature.
Fruit and vegetable are highly perishable commodities — as they are living tissues that are subject to continuous changes after harvest, because of their peculiar characteristics, i.e. high moisture content and rapid rate of metabolism, they are prone to deteriorate rapidly after harvest and also due to lack of adequate post harvest losses due to spoilage are very high. Actual post harvest losses have been estimated to be as high as 25- 30% of the value of produced. At this scale the post harvest losses are Rs.6000-7000 crores per annum.
Even if 10 % of this could be save by converting them into processed products at peak production season, there will be saving of Rs.650 crores to the horticultural wealth of the country. But processing industry at present is utilizing only about 1.8 percent of total production for processing, as against the performance of other countries Malaysia (83%). Philippines (78%). Brazil and US (70%), a new orientation needs to be given to the fruit processing industry to upgrade nutrition, minimize post harvest losses. This can be achieved only by enhancing processing of fruits and vegetables.
According to recent joint study conducted by the management consultancy firm Mc Kinsey and Co-coordinators and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CLL) at least 50% of the fruits and vegetables produced in country are lost due to wastage and value destruction. The wastage cost is estimated to be Rs 23,000 crores annually. Therefore, in order to achieve our largest goal of feeding the population as well as meeting the requirements of the processing industry and export trade, only increasing the production and productivity of fruits will not be enough. We should have to strengthen the post harvest facilities of our country.
The main objective of fruits processing is to supply wholesome safe, nutritious and acceptable food to consume throughout the year and the main objectives of post harvest studies are reduction of fruit losses, imports of produce and generation of Urban and Rural employment as well as sources of income to the farmers and artisans. It also helps in developing value added product so that they can be relished throughout the year. So there should be some ways that farmers can easily and rapidly save their produce. This can be only being done if they have a processing industry nearby. However, farmers can’t spend crores of rupees to establish industry. So there should be some way to make a products of fruits, which is easy to prepare and needs very low initial investment.
Syed Pula Ruksana
M.Sc. Horticulture
SHUATS,Prayagraj,Uttar Pradesh
email @syedruksana1616@gmail.com