Use of Passion Fruit Albedo as a Source of Pectin to Produce Araticum (annona Crassiflora Mart.) Preserves

Several Cerrado’s fruits with economic potential are consumed in natura or processed around the country, however, few data are available in the specialized literature regarding the chemical composition of these fruits and its technological application. Due to this, there is a need for scientific research on these cerrado´s fruits and its functional value. In the food industry, the juices production and other productions that use fruits as raw material generate a significant residue amount, which have technological and nutritional potential. Because of thatthe objective of this present work was to characterize Araticum fruit (Annona crassiflora Mart.), as well as optimazing the this fruit process in the form of Araticum preserve, using passion fruit´s albedo, discarded as waste by the industry, as a source of pectin. For characterization, moisture analysis, total soluble solids, titratable total acidity, vitamin C, lipid content, protein, total dietary fiber, reducing and non-reducing sugars and antioxidant activity were carried out by the DPPH method. For processing, were used a 2³ factorial design complete with three center points. The Araticum, presented low acidity, soluble solids at about 24 °Brix and  moisture of 60%. The value of ascorbic acid found for the fruit was 58.11 mg /100 g of fruit, whereas the lipid content found in Araticum was 2.83%, that is, they are not fruits with a high fat content for a low calorie diet. The antioxidant activity was 27.19 mg of DPPH/g of fruit. During the optimization, it was observed that the best formulations, in terms of obtaining Araticum preserve with higher concentrations of protein, vitamin C, fibers, and of higher yield are those with high concentration of citric acid and the higher pulp/sugar ratio. Keywords: Cerrado, Araticum, New Product, optimization.