Cactus pear fruit: A new source for a natural sweetener
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摘要
The use of cactus pear ( Opuntia ficus indica L.) to obtain anew natural liquid sweetener was studied. The juice of the fruit (16.5 °Brix) was clarified with enzymes, treated with active carbon to take out thecolor and vacuum concentrated to obtain a 60 °Brix syrup or liquidsweetener. Physical and chemical characteristics determined included:aw; reducing sugars (as inverted sugar); glucose (%); ashcontent (%); sugar composition by TLC; OD (420 nm) and Y, x, ychromaticity coordinates; viscosity (cps) and density (g ml-1).Sensory analyses to determine the relative sweetness were also conducted.Cactus pear syrup contained 52.38% reducing sugar. The syrup had a pHof 4.31, a viscosity of 27.05 cps, an Aw of 0.83, a density of1.2900 g ml-1, an acidity (as citric acid) of 0.74% and anash content of 1.4%. Compared with traditional sweeteners such asfructose and glucose syrup, the acidity was greater than that of HFCS (highfructose corn syrup) of 0.035%, and the ash values were considered alittle high compared to glucose syrup which is 1.0%; thesedisparities can be attributed to the different processing conditionsemployed. Sensory evaluation revealed the same relative sweetness for cactuspear syrup and glucose, but lower than fructose; cactus pear syrup had arelative sweetness value of 67 with respect to sucrose (100).