Abstract

Fresh aonla after harvest is highly perishable and osmotic dehydration is an appropriate processing method to improve taste as well as shelf life in a cost effective and small-scale level for which the sucrose concentrations needs to be standardised. Therefore, this study was conducted during 2017-18 at the Institute of Agriculture, Visva-Bharati, Sriniketan, West Bengal, India to determine the effect of osmotic dehydration in hypertonic aqueous sucrose solution and drying methods for preparing dried aonla segments. Fresh aonla segments were subjected to osmotic dehydration in the hypertonic aqueous sucrose solution of different concentrations (40, 50 and 60 oBrix) and dried in different drying methods (direct sun drying and hot air oven conditions at 60 °C) until a constant weight achieved by dried aonla segments. The results revealed that the aonla segments osmotically dehydrated in 60 oBrix sucrose solution for 12 hours and dried in a hot air oven (60 °C) was the most acceptable products. The most acceptable product consumed less drying time (16.30 hours), have maximum TSS (19.67 oBrix), total sugar (24.71%), reducing sugar (7.45%), ascorbic acid (270.33 mg/100g) content and have minimum tannin (2.50%) content. The sensory evaluation of the most acceptable product revealed that it has a maximum score of colour (6.33), flavour (6.50), appearance (6.66) and overall acceptability (6.50) out of 9 points rating. The overall result also revealed that hot air oven drying method was more efficient than sun drying method.