Development of strawberry jam and its quality evaluation during storage

Abstract

The present study was conducted to develop a strawberry jam and to evaluate its quality parameters during storage. The research work was carried out at Food Technology Centre of PCSIR Labs Complex Peshawar. Fresh, healthy and mature fruits were sorted, washed and pieces were made with the help of stainless steel knife and dipped in 0.2 % citric acid solution to avoid browning. The fruit pieces were cooked into the open steel kettle and cooked till the required brix (68obrix). Fruit jam was allowed to cool and stored in sterilized glass jars for sixty days. The physicochemical analysis such as TSS, pH, acidity (%), sugar acid ratio, reducing sugar and non reducing sugar were studied at an interval of 15 days for a total period of sixty days. The Strawberry jam was also organoleptically evaluated by a panel of 10 experienced judges using Nine Point Hedonic Scale. Results showed that the values of TSS ( o brix), acidity (%), pH, sugar acid ratio and non reducing sugar (%) significantly decreased from 66.5, 0.68, 3.20, 97.79, 28.11 to 68.6, 0.86, 2.91, 80 and 25.24 respectively during sixty days of storage while reducing sugar increased from 42.58 to 45.32 %. The organoleptic evaluation shows that the values of colour, taste and overall acceptability also decreased from 9.0 to 7.0, 7.1 and 7.0 respectively during storage. From the overall results it is concluded that the prepared strawberry jam is of good quality and has maximum consumer acceptance.