Technological and economical studies on production of date powder and paste from some low quality Egyptian dates

Abstract

The aim of this work was to utilize the low quality date palm (prishible soft date and seedling of dry dates) to produce date paste and date powder, respectively. Amhat; a cultivar soft variety was used at rutab stage for producing date paste, while the dry dates were used for producing date powder by applying simple technology. These two products can be easily handled, transported, and utilized. They are shelf stable so that can be available all the year round for making many food products. The date paste production percentage from Amhat cultivar was 40-42%. Chemical composition of date paste was: 24.48% moisture, 61.97% total sugars, 2.04% protein, 1.97% fibers and 1.05% ash. The estimated date powder production percentage from the dry date seedling cultivar was 50-55%. The chemical analysis showed that date powder contains: 8.9% moisture, 80.67% total sugars, 2.20% protein, 2.59% fibers and 1.46 ash. The economical evaluation of the study indicated the feasibility of investment in production of date paste, date powder and date pits powder because it had internal rate of return of 28.5 %, which exceeds the posted bank interest value. In addition, the percentage of return to costs was 4.44% and the percentage of return to investment was 19.1%. The overhead invested in the study can be regained within two years and two months. Introduction Date palm fruit (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is considered one of the most important fruit in the arid and semi-arid land. In Egypt, the total area cultivated with date palm is 115.6 thousand Feddans which produce 1.68 million tons of date fruits (Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, 2015). This amount represents 15.1 % of total production of Egyptian fruits (11.15 M tons). Only 16.5% of total date fruit production (278 thousand tons) was directed for food processing. Most of date processing plants are ordinary date packing houses where good quality dates are prepared and packaged for export or for local market with minimal processing operations. The amount of waste from date fruits was 331 thousand tons which represent about 19.6% of total date fruit production in Egypt (Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, 2015). Date palm cultivars can be classified into three main types (Kader and Hussein, 2009) according to their fruit moisture content. The three stages of date fruit ripening are khalal (bisr), rutab and tamar (Kassem 2012). The chemical composition of dates is