Sweet corn has a higher moisture content, making it challenging to store for longer. The edible coating acts as primary packaging. The samples were blanched in hot water at 90°C for 90 s initially and were coated with olive oil concentration 0%-100% for 60-300 s at temperatures of 40-60°C, which makes the kernels acceptable even after 7 days in comparison to 4 days in untreated samples. The coating of hot water-blanched sweet corn kernels increased length, width, thickness, true density, porosity, color a*, color b*, ΔE, chroma, browning index, moisture content, and pH with increased coating time, coating temperature, and concentration and varied from 11.78 to 12.40 mm, 9.87 to 10.22 mm, 4.14 to 4.66 mm, 1082 to 1093 kg/m 3 , 33.70% to 37. 29%, 4.19 to 4.57, 0.09 to 1.36, 7.46 to 8.34, 14.11 and 12.43, 78.32% to 83.41% and 5.87 to 5.98. While the coating process decreased bulk density, color L*, total sugar, ascorbic acid, and total soluble solid of sweet corn kernels with an increase in coating time and coating temperature and varied from 685.43 to 717.32 kg/m 3 , 74.68 to 75.12, 6.4% to 7.2%, 6.4 to 7.1 mg/100 g and 18.5 to 19.8 °Brix, respectively. The coating of sweet corn and hot water blanching is a promising hurdle to spoilage for extending the shelf life of sweet corn in food processing industries for developing various processed food products.coating, color characteristics, hot water blanching, olive oil concentration, physicochemical characteristics, sweet corn kernels
| INTRODUCTIONSweet corn is a popular food ingredient owing to its unique taste. Sweet corn is a type of maize with high sugar content, and it is additionally referred to as sugar corn, pole corn, or Indian corn (Salunkhe & Desai, 1984). Sweet corn is used in fresh, canned, and frozen forms (Azanza et al., 1994). Corn chips, corn cookies, corn nuts, corn on the cob, corn tortillas, tortilla chips, corn pasta, corn bhel, corn pizza, Mexican food, corn samosha, corn dhosa, Italian food, frozen sweet corn, and dried sweet corn are some of the value-added products of sweet corn that are popular in various parts of the world. Additionally, it is used in multiple dishes, including soups, fried sweet corn with pork, rice, and other vegetables, and fresh cobs that are boiled and roasted for direct eating. A higher respiration rate of 40-112 mg CO₂ kg⁻¹ h⁻¹ of sweet corn stored at 0-10°C indicates its perishability and short storage life (Vigneault et al., 2004). Sweet corn should remain tender and sweet during processing and storage as these quality attributes have prime importance. The produced sweet corn is primarily used in fresh, canned, and frozen forms (Azanza et al., 1994). Sweet corn is high dietary fiber food and is also rich in xanthophyll, zeaxanthin, ferulic acid, and phenoplast compounds. These bioactive compounds prevent noncommunicable diseases (Hu & Xu, 2011;Liu, 2007).