PROCESSING OF MULBERRY JUICE INTO SUGAR SYRUP BY USING DIFFERENT EVAPORATION TECHNIQUES AND ITS EVALUATION DURING STORAGE

Abstract

White mulberry has a unique flavor in the food industry have been attracted attention. It’s frequently used as a healthy sweetener. On the other hand, mulberry sugar has historically been made from mulberry fruits through a lengthy process that entails heating the juice in an open pan at a high temperature (>100 °C) for three to five hours. When sugar is prepared using this traditional process, it is overcooked, which degrades its chemical and physical qualities. The goal of the current study was to compare open heat evaporation (OHE) with alternate processing methods, such as microwave evaporation (ME) and Rotary vacuum evaporation (RE) in order to examine how mulberry juice can be processed into sugar concentrate. When compared to ME (16 min and 106 ℃) and OHE (49.8 min and 104.6 °C) mulberry sugar syrup produced by rotary evaporation at 60 °C and 250 mbar vacuum (RE-60) needed the shortest production time (15 min) and the lowest processing temperature (57.8 ℃). It was a pale brownish color as well. It was shown to have reduced amounts of disaccharides (sucrose) and larger amounts of mono saccharides (glucose and fructose). With the help of this study, the sugar processing industry now has a different way to create mulberry sugar that has superior physicochemical properties and requires less processing time, the rotary evaporation method at 60 °C under 250 mbar vacuum.