Authors : Sudha Tiwari and Nandita Sarkar
Page Nos : 123-131
Description :
Carrot is one of the nutritious and economical vegetable. It has high carotene with abundant vitamins, dietary fibre and minerals. To extend carrot’s utilisation during off-season, carrot was oven-dried at 50 ºC for 4-5 hours in dark and evaluated for proximate value, vitamin content, functional property and its shelf-life. Values were analysed using SPSS version 16 at 0.05% level. Results indicated that moisture content was 87.02% in fresh carrot and 4.2% in dry carrot powder. The mean protein value of fresh carrot was 4.8gm/100gm whereas dried carrot had 3.7 gm/100gm protein on dry basis with significant difference at 0.05% level. Fibre content in fresh carrot was 8.2 which increased significantly on drying to 13.0 gm/100gm. Dried carrot powder contain less carbohydrate (7.4%), ash (12.8%) and energy (14%) than fresh carrot. Fresh carrot contains beta–carotene and ascorbic acid content in the range of 37.09 μg/100gm and 63.19mg/100 respectively which reduced upon drying by16%(beta-carotene) and 21% (ascorbic acid)due to their heat labile nature. The anti-oxidative activity was declined by 14% reaching to 83.50% of DPPH inhibition in dry carrot powder. The total poly-phenolic content was found to be higher in dried carrot (1.3%, db) than fresh carrot (0.8%db). Microbial analysis indicates steadily increase in the bacterial count, although the count was within the limit during 90 day of the shelf life study. The fungal and coliform count showed negligible presence in the powdered carrot up to three months thus, guarantees its suitability under hygienic condition. The developed carrot powder contains high beta-carotene, fibre, phenolic compounds and low in calorie could be employed as a raw ingredient in production of supplementary food.
