Production of tropical fruit powders is rapidly increasing in popularity among consumers as well as manufacturers due to their natural
color, flavor, nutrition and taste. Fruit powders are taken either directly
as drinks or used as secondary ingredients in baby foods, candies, fruit
yogurt drinks and soups. There are various drying techniques used to
prepare fruit powders and spray drying is the most convenient and
most widely practiced in industry [1]. In many cases pulpy fruits need
to be clarified. Technically it is quite impossible to convert pulpy fruits
into powder by spray drying. This operation removes part of the pulp
and coarse particles (which are rich sources of fiber and phenolic compounds) to enable proper functioning of the atomizer, [2]. Secondly, it
is necessary to add quite high amounts of carriers to change the amorphous state by increasing glass transition temperature (Tg). Amorphous
materials are frequently associated with the problem of stickiness or
agglomeration due to the nature of the changing phase at the glass transition temperature (Tg) [3]. However, addition of additives eventually
contributes to the increase in solid content as bulky materials, which
adversely affects the sensory as well as nutritional properties. Due to
the high sugar content of tropical fruits, high temperature drying by mechanical drier makes it sticky, and is thus difficult to convert into powder. Therefore, for producing whole fruit powder, drying fruits at low
temperature and reduced pressure with low amounts of carrier (maltodextrin in our case) is apparently the best alternate [1]. For producing
whole fruit powder, freeze drying though costly, is the best option in
relation to sensory and nutrition properties. Hence, in this study freeze
drying was used to produce whole fruit powder.