Quality Characteristics of Dried Persimmon Prepared By Different Pretreatments

Abstract

Persimmon is one of the widely cultivated fruits in Korea, China, and Japan. The fruits of persimmon contain various phytochemicals which have health promoting effects. Drying is one of the most oldest and famous fruit processing techniques. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of different pretreatments on moisture content, soluble solid content, and firmness of dried persimmon fruit. The moisture content of HCT (dried persimmon prepared by soaking in 50 ppm sodium hypochlorite for 1 min at 20°C) and ACT (dried persimmon prepared by soaking into 1% N-acetylcysteine for 1 min at 20°C) followed by STT (dried persimmon prepared by soaking the fruits into 5% salt solution containing 1% citric acid for 1 min at 65°C) showed the significantly low moisture content on 6 days of drying. The soluble solid content of HCT and MST (dried persimmon prepared by soaking into 0.5% sodium metabisulfite for 1 min at 20°C) was significantly low at 6 DAD compared to the other treatments. Similarly, the firmness of ACT showed a high value on day 6. The firmness of HCT was significantly low as in the control followed by MST on day 6. The results indicated that fruit pretreatment by soaking in 50 ppm sodium hypochlorite solution could be a good option to enhance the quality characteristics of dried persimmon fruits.