Ready to serve Aloe vera Gel blended functional cashew apple beverage for improved nutritional and sensory qualities

Fruit beverages serve as dietary supplements that are rich in vitamins, minerals and vital micronutrients with many potential health benefits. Functional beverages are the fastest growing product category for delivery of a range of functional ingredients that contribute to human health. Cashew is an important commercial crop and is designated as Dollar earning crop of the country. During the cashew processing, the nutritionally rich cashew apple is wasted which has good potential in fruit beverage industry. Aloe has been recognized internationally as a functional food resource especially for the preparation of health drinks. In the present study, development of functional cashew apple ready to serve (RTS) beverage with different levels of aloe gel supplementation was done and assessed the storage stability at room temperature. Biochemical, sensory and microbial analyses were conducted periodically during the storage. The RTS formulation supplemented with 10 per cent osmo-dehydrated aloe gel cubes recorded the highest TSS (13.00⁰Brix), reducing sugar (4.92%), total sugar (7.95%), ascorbic acid (20.84mg /100g ), antioxidant activity (80.72%), total phenols (90.51 μg /g) and crude fiber content (0.99 %) with the highest sensory scores for appearance, colour, flavour, taste and overall acceptability. The formulation was acceptable for sensory and biochemical qualities and microbiologically safe up to three months of storage.