Impact of High Pressure Homogenization on the Quality of Dragon Fruit RTS Beverage Developed with Reduced Mucilage

Dragon fruit is popular among consumers because of its attractive color. However, presence of mucilage is a disadvantage for its processed products specifically RTS beverage. Hence, in this study, a ready-to-serve (RTS) beverage was prepared by reducing the mucilage content through process modification and subjecting to High Pressure Homogenization (HPH). Analysis of non-homogenized (NH) and homogenized (HPH) RTS beverage showed decreased ascorbic acid and total betalains content on 0th day in HPH beverage. In contrast, total polyphenols and antioxidant activity was found significantly high in HPH beverage. Profiling of phenolic acids revealed high 2,4-dihyroxybenzoic acid, vanillic acid, gallic acid, ferulic acid and chlorogenic acid in HPH beverage compared to NH beverage. Sensory evaluation data depicted that HPH beverage had high mean score for taste, mouth feel and overall acceptability. This indicates that subjecting a pre processed dragon RTS beverage for HPH at 100 MPa with single cycle could retain 49% total betalains pigment, 85% total polyphenols and 67% antioxidant activity with highly acceptable sensory quality with reduced turbidity.