Sustainable valorization of amla pomace: optimization of a sweetmeat using the fuzzy logic approach and its quality characterization

Abstract

Food waste constitutes nearly half the global waste and is expected to rise due to population growth and changing consumer patterns. Fruit pomace, a prominent by-product of juice production, offers potential nutritional and phytochemical properties that promote improved therapeutic, functional and sensory qualities of food products when incorporated, while supporting sustainable bio-economic practices. Amla pomace, rich in vitamin C and bioactive compounds, has high potential for developing functional foods. Further, utilization of amla pomace in sweetmeats is found to yield better nutritional and functional properties compared to those of traditional khoa based sweetmeats. This study is focused on the development of amla pomace sweetmeats emphasizing on the use of the fuzzy logic approach for optimization of sensory data, considering colour & appearance (CA), body & texture (BT), flavour (F) and overall acceptability (OA) as the sensory quality parameters. The best sweetmeat sample, which performed better than the control samples, consisted of 30% khoa, 22.5% amla pomace, 7.5% desiccated coconut, and 40% sugar. Additionally, the key characteristics that define sweetmeat quality were ranked as follows: OA > BT > F > CA. Further, the nutritional, phytochemical and textural characteristics of control and optimized amla pomace sweetmeat samples were assessed. The amla pomace sweetmeat had significantly higher amounts of fibre (3.97%), ascorbic acid (98.71 mg/100 mL) and phenolic compounds (54.65 mg GAE g⁻¹), while high levels of fat and protein were observed otherwise. Additionally, inclusion of amla pomace enhanced the textural properties of the sweetmeat. Furthermore, the polysaccharides isolated from the amla pomace sweetmeat were analysed for monosaccharide composition using GC-MS and the results illustrated the presence of various monosaccharides including galactose, galacturonic acid, arabinose, rhamnose, glucose, xylose and mannose.