OPTIMIZATION OF CONDITIONS FOR PREPARATION OF FUNCTIONAL WINE FROM DIOSPYROS KAKI

Abstract

ABSTRACT newlinePersimmon (Diospyros kaki) is an edible fruit with many nutritional and medicinal properties. The fruit is native to East Asia and is also cultivated in some parts of India. Being highly perishable in nature, long term storage at the farm level is difficult and lot of produce goes waste during the production season. Hence, needs to be consumed shortly after harvest. The market for conversion of persimmon fruits into fruit juices and preserves is already saturated, so the conversion of fruit into wine is an alternative for its utilization. The present investigations were carried out with the objective to standardise and determine the suitability of persimmon cultivars for quality wine preparation and maturation. Persimmon fruits of two cultivars Hachiya (astringent) and Fuyu (non astringent) procured from Kullu District of Himachal Pradesh were employed for wine preparation. Wines were prepared with different concentration of additives and fermentation conditions. Among the cultivars, fuyu cultivar has an advantage over Hachiya for various physicochemical characteristics for wine making such as high content of total sugars (18.4g/100g) and ascorbic acid (7.8 mg/100g). Both the fruits i.e., Hachiya and Fuyu were also noted to possess high antioxidant potential (86% and 82% respectively). Further, the wine prepared from pulp of Fuyu cultivar with fruit peel, diluted in ratio 1:1, ameliorated with sugar to 240Brix, added with DAHP (0.1%), citric acid (0.2%), pectinestrase (0.4%) and fermented with mixed microbial starter culture of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Torulaspora delbrueckii at the rate of 5 percent produced wines with better physico-chemical and sensory characteristics. The wine also had high antioxidant activity (82%) and was rich in phenols (47.4 mg/l), known to promote health benefits in the consumers. Thus, consumption of moderate quantity of persimmon wine can have beneficial effects on health. Maturation studies with different wood chips of persimmon wine revealed that maturation of minimum 9 months with addition of oak (Quercus leucotrichophora) wood chips should be given to the persimmon wine for improvement in quality and palatability of the wine. Further, the changes occurred during maturation were considered desirable for the improvement in taste, aroma and palatability of wine. The resulting final wine was found to be most suitable for consumption as it rated high in sensory score (19.82) and total antioxidant potential (85%). The methanol content (31ppm) in wines was far below toxicity limit, so will not have any detrimental effect on consumers. The cost of production of persimmon wine was found to be higher than other temperate fruit wines. But in comparison to prevailing market rates, the persimmon wines are still cheaper. newline