MSc

The present study entitled “Post harvest characterisation and value addition
of sweet lovi-lovi (Flacourtia spp.)” was undertaken with the objectives of
characterising sweet lovi-lovi accessions based on physico-chemical and nutritional
attributes, to enhance shelf life through packaging and value addition.
The sweet lovi-lovi accessions were collected from three centers located at
Vellanikkara
namely, college orchard of Department of Fruit Science, Central
nursery and Regional station of National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources.
The physico-chemical characters showed significant variation among the
sweet lovi-lovi accessions. The desirable post harvest qualities like high fruit weight,
pulp percentage, less seed content along with highest total sugar (12.81 %), non
reducing sugar (1.33 %), anthocyanin (0.04 mg 100g−1), carotenoid (582.55 mg
100g−1), iron (33.23 mg 100g−1), crude fibre (2.92 g 100g−1) and lowest tannin (0.21
mg 100g−1) was observed in Acc. 2 collected from college orchard. Hence ripe sweet
lovi-lovi fruits from Acc. 2 were used for shelf life studies.
Standardisation of packaging and storage requirements were done in Acc. 2
by subjecting fruits to five methods of packaging viz., packing in polythene cover
(200 gauge) with ventilation, polythene cover (200 gauge) without ventilation,
polypropylene punnets, polystyrene box covered with cling film, shrink wrapping in
areca plate. Each package was stored in ambient, refrigerated (5 ± 2°C) and cold
storage (12 ± 2°C) conditions.
Shelf life of sweet lovi-lovi fruits was longer when stored under cold storage
condition than fruits stored in ambient and refrigerated condition. Areca plates
containing fruits wrapped with polyolefin film of 15μ thickness (T6) and fruits packed
in polythene cover (200 gauge) without ventilation (T3) in cold storage were found to
have longest shelf life (3 days). The physiological loss in weight (PLW %) was
significantly highest and shelf life was shortest in unwrapped fruits under the three
different storage conditions. The treatment T6 showed highest TSS (17.27 °Brix) and
total sugar (12.73 %) after one day of storage at 12 ± 2°C.
To increase the utilisation of sweet lovi-lovi fruits, value added products like
wine, preserve and Ready To Serve beverage were prepared and evaluated.
Among the wine prepared from five accessions, the overall acceptability was
maximum for Acc. 5 (7.50). All the attributes of wine showed an increasing trend on
storage and the total score raised from 58.09 to 61.77 after three months. The highest
mean scores for flavour (7.54), texture (7.27), odour (7.27), taste (8.00), after taste
(7.54) and overall acceptability (7.86) were recorded for Acc. 2 among the preserve
prepared from five accessions of sweet lovi-lovi. During storage, the total score for
organoleptic attributes increased from 58.02 to 58.47 for preserve prepared from this
accession. RTS beverage prepared from Acc. 3 recorded highest mean score for
appearance (7.44), colour (7.12), texture (7.44), taste (7.81), and overall acceptability
(7.78). All the attributes showed a declining trend and the total score decreased from
59.09 to 55.43 after three months of storage. Thus accessions 2, 3 and 5 were found
to be ideal for preparation of preserve, RTS beverage and wine respectively. The
microbial population was least during the initial month and increased slightly on
storage but was within the permissible limit in all the products.
The results of the study indicated that sweet lovi-lovi has good nutritional
potential almost similar to other minor fruits like jamun, blackberry etc. The
extension of shelf life to 3 days also help in better utilization of the fruit and
prospects for value addition is high for sweet lovi-lovi.