Effect of drying treatments and storage stability on quality characteristics of bael powder.

Dehydration of bael pulp in to powder form is a challenging operation, mainly due to the sticky issue of bael pulp and caking of powder during handling and storage. To overcome on this problem maltodextrin MD (drying aid) and tricalcium phosphate, TCP (anti caking agent) were added to the bael pulp at four levels along with control and dried in a mechanical drier into thin layer at 58 ± 2 °C for 12 h, to obtain a moisture content of 4-5 % in dehydrated pulp. The dehydrated bael pulp was grounded in a laboratory powder mill and sieve with 30 mesh sieve. The powder was packed in 150gauge PP, 400gauge LDPE and 200gauge HDPE pouches and was stored at low temperature (7 °C) and ambient condition (18-35 °C) up to 6 months for storage study. The powder was evaluated for its quality characteristics in respect of acidity, sugars, antioxidant, phenol, ascorbic acid, non- enzymatic browning (NEB) before packaging and during storage. The amount of MD and TCP required to reduce powder stickiness and caking were optimized on the powder properties. The amount of MD (0.25 kg per kg dry bael solids) and TCP (0.15 kg per kg dry bael solids) with the values of degree of caking (19.24 %) and stickiness point temperature (45.4 °C) were found to be optimum for reducing the powder stickiness, caking and nutritional parameters. The adsorption isotherm of bael powder was found to be type-II sigmoid and 200 g HDPE as packaging material followed by storage at low temperature were selected as best process.