Texture is a significant quality attribute of fruits and vegetables.
During osmotic dehydration, the textural properties
of osmo-dehydrated products are changed due to physical
and chemical modifications occuring in the cell structure
(Lewicki, 1998). Puncture force is usually used to measure
the textural properties of dehydrated products which is the
measure of the hardness of the product surface, and presents
the extent of case hardening during drying (Lin et al., 1998).
The hardness value for fresh papaya was found to be 0.206
N.Maximum force found at treatment T5
(70 brix solution)
and minimum force found in treatment T1
(50 brix solution).
Force increases as sugar concentration increases. It was found
that osmosed samples were considerably softer than untreated
samples.From the result it can be concluded that firmness
decreases during storage. Firmness changes during storage
may be a consequence of water loss and cellular breakdown,
due to both microbial growth and biochemical activity