Process optimization for the production of blood fruit powder by spray drying technique and its quality evaluation.

Blood fruit (Haematocarpus validus) has important bioactive compounds, antioxidant properties and some essential minerals, which plays an essential part in human nutrition and traditional medicine for treating arthritis, jaundice, hypertension, cancer, etc. This work was conducted to optimize the parameters of spray drying process for production of blood fruit juice powder and its quality was compared with freeze dried and tray dried powder. It was observed that powder produced by spray drying techniques resulted in higher yield, solubility and better retention of resveratrol content and was considered to be of superior quality, having a higher degree of reconstitution ratio as compared to powders produced by freeze and tray drying techniques. High performance liquid chromatography study of blood fruit powder showed the presence of resveratrol and other phenolic compounds. Scanning electron microscope was used to study the surface morphology and it revealed that spray-dried powder has uniformity in shape and size as compared to freeze dried and tray dried powder. The present investigation indicated that spray drying results in better, superior quality powders that are easier for packaging, transportation, having better shelf life. © Association of Food Scientists & Technologists (India) 2020.