Approaches to Enhance Sugar Content in Foods: Is the Date Palm Fruit a Natural Alternative to Sweeteners?

Post harvest hot water immersion treatment as sustainable approach for artificial curing of immature dates to reduce wastage

Unfavorable climatic conditions hinder the natural ripening of date fruit, resulting in significant wastage. This study highlighted the impact of artificial ripening on quality of immature dates (cvs. Khadrawi, Jihadi, Hillawi, and Mansi) which were pretreated with hot water (95 °C) immersion (HWI) technique for different time intervals (0 s, 30s, 1, 2 and 3 min) and dried at 48 ± 2 °C for 48 h. HWI significantly affected quality of dates; losses being higher with longer immersion intervals. Pre-treated dates (HWI-30 s) showed improved color and higher ripening index; with considerable sugars, fibre (10.00-12.59 %), protein (3.08-3.87 %), phenolics (214.3-507.65 mg GAE/100 g), flavonoids (209.31-454.57 mg QE/100 g), carotenoids (115.98-172.63 mg/100 g), antioxidants (606.62-926.16 μg TE/g), macro (potassium 703.85-860.93 mg/100 g) and micro (iron 4.0-5.85 mg/100 g) minerals. Organoleptic evaluation revealed higher acceptability for Khadrawi and Jihadi cultivars after HWI-30s.FTIR spectra indicated presence of phenols, organic acids, sugars and dietary fibre components retained in the HWI pretreated date samples.

Non-Destructive Evaluation of the Physiochemical Properties of Milk Drink Flavored with Date Syrup Utilizing VIS-NIR Spectroscopy and ANN Analysis

A milk drink flavored with date syrup produced at a lab scale level was evaluated. The production process of date syrup involves a sequence of essential unit operations, commencing with the extraction, filtration, and concentration processes from two cultivars: Sukkary and Khlass. Date syrup was then mixed with cow's and camel's milk at four percentages to form a nutritious, natural, sweet, and energy-rich milk drink. The sensory, physical, and chemical characteristics of the milk drinks flavored with date syrup were examined. The objective of this work was to measure the physiochemical properties of date fruits and milk drinks flavored with date syrup, and then to evaluate the physical properties of milk drinks utilizing non-destructive visible-near-infrared spectra (VIS-NIR). The study assessed the characteristics of the milk drink enhanced with date syrup by employing VIS-NIR spectra and utilizing a partial least-square regression (PLSR) and artificial neural network (ANN) analysis. The VIS-NIR spectra proved to be highly effective in estimating the physiochemical attributes of the flavored milk drink. The ANN model outperformed the PLSR model in this context. RMSECV is considered a more reliable indicator of a model's future predictive performance compared to RMSEC, and the R2 value ranged between 0.946 and 0.989. Consequently, non-destructive VIS-NIR technology demonstrates significant promise for accurately predicting and contributing to the entire production process of the product's properties examined.