Problem Description:
India is producing surplus sugarcane and sugar. Therefore, diversifying the cane juice is inevitable. Product diversification is need of the hour. Cane jam is a unique product from sugarcane juice used in daily diet and is not available in the market till date. Cane jam is purely from sugarcane juice and easily blended with flavouring agents. The product is having huge potential as a commercial product like the fruit jams. Solution Description:
Cane jam is a novel value added product developed by ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute. This product is unique and is not available in the market. Therefore, ICAR-SBI has developed a novel process for production of jam wholly from sugarcane juice. The process and methodology has been standardized for various processing parameters such as juice filtration, arresting the anti-browning effect by the addition of anti-browning agents, temperature controlled boiling of juice, dissolution of thickening agents in acidified medium, fixing the juice Brix and boiling temperature for addition of thickening agents and final setting point of jam. For flavored variants of cane jam, any permitted natural flavoring agent can be added to the product. The final cane jam product developed has a Brix content of 61-70 %. The titratable acidity of the cane jam product was 0.57% which is comparable with fruit jams (0.3-1.0%) available in the market. Water activity of cane jam was around 0.8 aw which is lesser than commercial fruit jams (around 0.9 aw). Moisture content in cane jam was 8.39% which is far below compared to fruit jams which are generally around 20-30%. Advantage of low moisture content and water activity is better shelf life. Total sugars in the cane jam were estimated to 46.5% which is below compared to fruit jams (50-65%). No addition of sugar in cane jams except sugarcane juice whereas in fruit jams, 50:50 ratio of fruits and sugars, are being used for jam preparation. Total calorific value of cane jam was 262 kcal which is slightly lesser than commercial jams (272 kcal). Cane jam is rich in minerals namely sodium (28.4mg/100grams), potassium (747.7mg/100grams), calcium (7.2mg/100gm), phosphorus (70.9mg/100g), zinc (1.1mg/100g) and copper (0.09 mg/100g). When compared to commercial fruit jams (77mg/100g), cane jam is ten time rich in potassium content whereas rest of the minerals were on par. Cane jam is also rich in vitamin B complex (57 mg) and vitamin E 5.73 mg. Benefit cost analysis of cane jam technology was worked out and found advantageous for commercial production. As per our study, the worked out price for 200 g cane jam packed in glass bottle is about Rs. 60/- which includes favorable profit for the producers.