Screening of methods for extraction of wild pomegranate arils

An experiment was conducted to find out the best method for the extraction of arils from wild pomegranate fruits at Department of Food Science and Technology, Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, Himachal Pradesh, India. Before, manual extraction of wild pomegranate arils, partial drying of fruits (< 10% moisture) in three different drying modes like mechanical cabinet, solar tunnel and open sun for varying time-temperature combinations was done. Exposure of fruits to time-temperature combination of 40°C for 6 hours (h) in mechanical cabinet drier was found best followed by solar tunnel drier (36–44°C for 12 h) and open sun (28–30°C for 36 h). Best drying treatments were selected on the basis of quality attributes like ease in separation of arils, no defects, good appearance and sensory scores of extracted arils on 9 point hedonic scale. Manual extraction of arils from mechanical cabinet dried wild pomegranate fruits also took minimum time in comparison of solar tunnel and open sun dried by a single worker, whereas, maximum time was taken for fresh fruits (control).