Laboratory of Arid and Oasis Cropping, Arid Land Institute, Kebili-4200, Tunisia
This work focuses on improving the quality of juice and syrup from post-sorting of dates (Deglet Nour) through an enzymatic process that involves invertase, the enzyme responsible for sucrose inversion in these products. The effectiveness of the method was demonstrated by comparing products w.r.t. physico-chemical, microbiological and sensory characteristics. The results show that invertase improved the quality and stability of the products as indicated by increase in their reducing sugar content from 25.21% in original syrup (not inverted) to 64.94% in inverted syrup. Juice and inverted syrup are foods which having better nutritional value than the original products. However, it is necessary to further improve their quality and stability by adjusting a few parameters (acidity, mineral content) in order to substantially increase their value and their integration in various food formulations.
Invertase, sucrose, juices, dates
