Application of Baking Technology into Fruit Waste Bio-products: Commercially Viable Healthy Bites

Abstract

Globally fruit processing industries are at increasing pace generating huge quantities of fruit waste creating lot of environmental pollution addressing for elimination measures. Conversion of bio-waste into value added functional foods turns out into one of the beneficial mode with dual benefits of health and environmental conservation. Baking technology occupies a unique place in food processing industry owing to its versatility and universal acceptability. Based on this background, the present study aimed at the efficient utilization of fruit waste through converting into fruit waste flour and to develop fruit waste based biscuits. Watermelon rind, pineapple pomace, grape pomace and orange pomace are the four selected fruit wastes as byproducts. The fruit waste flours are incorporated at 10 per cent level to the base ingredient of wheat flour and subjected to sensory evaluation to test the acceptability of the food waste bio-products developed as biscuits. The nine-point hedonic scale is adopted and the mean scores revealed above eight mean sensory score for all the sensory parameters. The statistical analysis for the sensory parameters among the four varieties of fruit waste biscuits showed not significant differences indicating well acceptability of all the four biscuits developed. The overall acceptability represented the maximum mean score for pineapple pomace biscuits followed by grape pomace biscuits then more or less nearer mean score for orange pomace biscuits and the minimum for watermelon rind biscuits. The nutrient analysis results showed that the developed biscuits had low moisture content, considerable calorie value and good sources of protein, crude fiber, calcium, iron and β – carotene. The present investigation findings clearly demonstrated that transformation of fruit waste into functional fruit waste biscuits as healthy bites is identified as effective measure to reduce fruit waste disposal. Promotion and encouragement to formulate wide array of fruit waste bio-products might be an in-depth exploratory research to become commercially viable bakery products at an industrial level.