Studies on Dehydration of Pineapple Using Different Sugar Syrup Treatments

The production of pineapple is 1.2 million tonnes (5^th largest) in India. The pineapple is delicious, nutritive fruit and has medicinal properties. Being highly perishable pineapple cannot be stored for longer period at ambient condition and only 10 per cent is being processed. There is greater scope and necessity of developing an appropriate technology for drying of pineapple with long shelf-life. The ripe pineapple was treated at 100°C for 1 min in boiling water to deactivate the enzyme. The blanched fruits were dipped in sucrose, glucose, fructose and invert sugar syrups at 68 ⁰Brix, for 48hrs for getting desired total soluble solids content. The treated fruits were further dried to 20 per cent moisture in a tray dryer at 60-65°C. Good quality and acceptable dried pineapples could be prepared by using sucrose syrup treatment at 68 ⁰Brix. Dried pineapples prepared using sucrose syrup and packed in aluminium foil pouch and stored at ambient temperature remained in excellent condition up to 3 months.