Asam pedas is a soupy food with spices and the main ingredient is thick-fleshed river fish. This food has a low shelf-life, so it is necessary to apply sterilization technology. This research uses catfish as the main ingredient and retort pouch as packaging. This study aimed to determine the best sterilization time for catfish’s asam pedas using retort pouch packaging based on physicochemical and microbiological characteristics. The sterilization time used is 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 minutes. Parameters observed were fat, protein, pH, thiobarbituric acid (TBA), texture, and Total Plate Count (TPC). The results showed that the sterilization time did not affect fat content, protein content, hardness level, TBA value, and the number of microbes, but the sterilization time significantly affected the pH value of catfish’s asam pedas packaged in retort pouches. Overall, the sterilization process carried out in this study did not change the physicochemical and microbyological characteristics of the catfish’s asam pedas. The best treatment in this study was a sterilization time of 25 minutes with a TPC value of 6.14 x 106 CFU/ml, the protein content of 11.89%, the hardness level of 178.81 gf, the pH value of 6.11, the fat content of 6.27%, and the TBA content of 0.19 mg malonaldehyde/kg.

Liquid sugar is a sweetener that is widely used in the food industry. Apart from starch, liquid sugar can be produced from cellulose hydrolysis by using cellulase enzymes. This study aims to obtain the best concentration of cellulase enzymes in the production of cellulose liquid sugar in the skin of red dragon fruit. The production of liquid sugar uses the method of hydrolysing enzymes of different concentrations (1%,2%,3%). The results showed that there was no significant influence on the characteristics of liquid sugars resulting from the addition of three different enzyme concentrations. The observed characteristics are total sugar content, water, ash content, viscosity and color. Enzyme concentration of 3% is the best liquid sugar based on observations of total sugar content and color.