Preservation of Fiber-Rich Banana Blossom as a Dehydrated Vegetable

Abstract

Banana blossom is an excellent source of crude fiber in the human diet. Hot water blanching adopted at cottage level is found ineffective for preserving the banana blossom due to enzymatic browning which reduces market demand of the processed product. Therefore, attempts were made to develop a ready-to-cook dehydrated product from the banana blossoms, while maintaining the quality and minimizing enzymatic browning and use of controversial sulfating agents. Cutting the banana blossoms into slices of 3 mm directly into a 0.2 % citric acid solution and keeping the slices immersed for 30 minute duration followed by drying at 50oC for 6 hr gave an acceptable product with respect to appearance, flavor and overall quality. The quality of the product remained almost unchanged when stored in Aluminum foil laminated with high density polyethylene (Al/HDPE) for more than a month. Oriented polypropylene laminated with cast polypropylene (OPP/CPP) was by far inferior for storage of the dehydrated banana blossom, of which moisture content increased by 2.9 % and L’ value decreased from 41.23 to 37.42.