Freeze Drying : Custard Apple: an Illustration of Advanced Method for Drying of Perishable Fruits

Custard apple fruit is having high initial moisture content of about 72-77 % (wb), there are more chances of the fruit getting spoiled or deteriorated. Also, custard apple is a highly perishable fruit, it has very short shelf life and marketing of fresh fruits to different places is very difficult. Therefore, it is necessary to convert it into value added products which retain colour, flavour and nutrients with longer shelf life. So to increase the shelf life of custard apple, the fruit is converted into various processed products like powder, dried slices, pulp, juice, RTS, beverages, etc. Custard apple powder is used in ice-cream, flavored milk, shrikhand, chocolates etc. A possible alternative solution to this problem is the storage and the transport in powder form. Custard apple powder by freeze drying is a very interesting alternative to recompose the fruit with practically all the properties of the natural product. Pretreatment of custard apple pulp with Maltodextrin will increase the rate of moisture removal. Freeze drying will give the dried product of the same size and shape as the original frozen material and will be found to have an excellent quality.