Background:
Sugarcane juice added with ginger and lemon is a common refreshing drink sold ubiquitously along the roads in Indian cities and towns. Sugarcanes are crushed using crushers to extract sugarcane juice and consumed fresh. Most of the times, it is not handled hygienically. Cane juice is prone for microbial contamination and spoilage and has poor shelf life. This juice can be bottled by pasteurization and addition of preservatives, which is unsafe if not processed perfectly. If water in the sugarcane juice removed, the solids collected as a dry product retaining the natural qualities and packed. Already proven drying technologies like spray drying, freeze drying, vacuum drying etc can be suitably employed, to produce a dry sugarcane juice product. Spray drying high sugar containing substances, getting a flow able powder product is very difficult. However, ICAR-SBI has developed a process to produce a dry sugarcane juice product that has good shelf life and commercial advantages.:
Technology Details:
ICAR-SBI has developed a process to produce a dry product of sugarcane juice having longer shelf life and suitable for commercial applications. The overall process involves filtered sugarcane juice added with bulking agents and spray dried to a dry product following standardized process parameters. The dry product thus obtained may be blended either with natural or permitted synthetic food flavours, colour, stabilizers, anti-caking agents etc. Further downstream processing carried out by applying dry extrusion and spheronization/granulation to produce a spheroid/granule product. The critical problem associated with spray drying is that sugarcane juice is high sugar material, and the sugars, due to its low glass transition temperature, results in a sticky or candy like material, not a powder product. With the standardized process and downstream processing the juice will result in to a product with very low moisture content, good flow ability and low hygroscopicity and has good shelf life when stored in ambient conditions and exposure to atmospheric air. The dry product can be stored about six months under ambient conditions. If stored under refrigerated conditions can be stored for more than a year. Compositional analysis indicated that this product retains all the flavour components, sugars, protein, ash, minerals, vitamins, phenol, flavonoids and antioxidant activity. Organoleptic test indicated that the product is comparable with fresh sugarcane juice. This product can be used for production of healthier products for human consumption like preparation of instant sugarcane juice or as a regular sweetener. This dry sugarcane juice product is also useful as flavour enhancer of food, beverages, sweets,’ confectioneries, bakery items, dairy products, weaning food, novel value added foods and medicinal / pharmaceutical preparations.