Development and Quality Evaluation of Value Added Dates (Phoenix Dactylifera) Jam

Abstract

Jam is a semi-solid product used as a spread ingredient in bakery product. In Dates Jam is made from date flesh (pulp) of ripe dates. The Date palm (Phoenix dactylfera) belonging to the family Arecaceae is one of the oldest cultivated fruit tree in the world. Dates are highly nutritious and rich in natural sugar, dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals. Jam based on date's meat in an innovative product aimed to make Dates product diversification. The objective was to formulate Dates jam with enhanced nutritional and sensory properties while maintaining food safety and shelf stability. This research study was carried out to investigate the production of Dates based jam, which are more nutritious and instead of jam containing artificial colors and sweeteners widely available in Sri Lanka. The result of this study confirms the great potentialities of Dates jam production, the treatment are as follows T0 - control, its only containing natural sugar of dates , T1- white sugal based jam its contain 40o/o of white sugar, T2 - Jaggery based jam its contain 40Yo of Jaggery, T3 - Glucose syrup based jam its contain 40o/o of glucose syrup. Physiochemical analysis vs - pH, moisture content (MC), Total soluble solid ('f'SS) and Tritrable Acidity (TA) and sensory analysis vs Textute, color, spreadability, taste, appearance. and overall acceptability were conducted for each treatment of the jam. Physiochernical analysis was conducted by using standards AOAC methods. Sensory evaluation was conducted using a sensory panel consisting 30 semi trained panelists, the texture, color, spreadability, taste, appearance and overall acceptability were evaluating using a seven - point hedonic scale, in the sensor,y analysis T3 (Glucose syrup with dates paste) had high textute, color, spreadability, taste and overall acceptability and appearance, T2 has high appearance similar to Tr. Therefore, Jam prepared from the Dates pulp is the best jam sample within three treatments and there is no any harmful effect to the consumers. 'Iherefore, it can be concluded that jam prepared by Dates flesh (pulp) is having good potentiai for the commercial production.