Passion fruit beverage- A Success story

Passion fruit beverage- A Success story

Passion Fruit is one of the most exotic of all tropical fruits because of its typical aroma and taste. The inner part of the fruit contains an aromatic mass of membranous sacs filled with orange colored pulpy liquid and up to 250 black-pitted seeds. The ripe fruit is slightly sweeter in taste but tastes very sour due to high amount of acid present in juice (more than 3.0%). The fruit contains mainly-Vitamin A: 700 IU, Vitamin C: 30.0 mg, Fiber: 6.8 g, Carbohydrates: 23.30 g, Protein: 2.2 g and Fat: 0.68 g (All per 100g of juice). Apart from these it contains minerals like phosphorous, iron, sodium, potassium etc.

Passion fruit juice is well known for its manyhealth benefits like

• Juice is an excellent digestive stimulant and helps in the treatment of gastric ailments.
• Seeds contain high amount of fiber that the body needs to cleanse the colon, improve digestion, and help prevent heart attacks and strokes.
• Passion fruit is high in vitamin A which helps the body to remove free radicals that cause skin and tissue damage, and it also helps to improve our vision.
• It is also rich in Vitamin C which helps to repair tissue, helps prevent heart disease and cancer and helps our bones.
• The antioxidants found in passion fruit have been found to inhibit the growth of cancer cells.

    Though passion fruit is grown to some extent in malnad regions of Karnataka as a climber on coffee shade trees, it has not been commercially exploited for the production of value added products.

A very delicious passion fruit beverage has been developed at the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bangalore. It is a beverage concentrate prepared from fully ripe passion fruits (Hybrid Kaveri). The rich natural colour and strong flavour of the product makes it very unique. It has a shelf life of 12 months at refrigerated conditions (5+1 oC)and 6 months at ambient conditions. The product needs to be diluted 1:3 with chilled water at the time of serving. Very strong and characteristic flavour of the fruit juice makes it ideal for blending with other fruits also.

The technical officer of KVK of IIHR, Gonikoppal was trained in the production of passion fruit beverage production at IIHR, Bangalore, who in turn has imparted training to Mrs. NirmalaJayaprakash of karakalli Village in SomwarpetTaluk and many others from Kodagu district during the training programme on processing and preservation of fruits and vegetables, conducted at KVK, Gonikoppal during 2009-10. With the help of technical advice from KVK, Mrs. NirmalaJayaprakash started the production of passion fruit juice from the fruits available locally in small scale. Due to attractive taste and flavour of the juice, she was able to sell 60-70 bottles per month and was earning a profit of Rs. 4000-6500 and due to the increased demand for the beverage she has promoted another 15 members of that village to take up the production of passion fruit juice.