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Peach Pomace Tested As Breakfast Cereal
Ingredient
By Steve Olson
California Agricultural Technology Institute
Posted on
Thursday, December 15, 2011 |
A Fresno State
faculty-student research team specializing in extrusion
technology has worked to benefit the region’s fruit
processing industry by providing ingredients for a new,
nutritious breakfast cereal.
Photos and Slideshow by JoAnne
Green
Food science professor
Dr. Gour Choudhury, now on the faculty at Cal Poly, San
Luis Obispo, and Fresno State graduate Preetam Sarkar
led the work featuring the use of peach pomace as a base
material for the cereal mix.
“The fruit processing
industry has been generating increasing amounts of solid
co-products as a result of a growing demand for
processed fruits,” Choudhury said in outlining the
project.
“However, technology
developments to open new and profitable markets for
fruit processing co-products have been limited. Our
study sought to develop value-added extrusion processes
for fruit processing co-products such as peach pomace.”
Peach pomace is a
slurried byproduct of fruit processing. It consists of
fine fruit parts in liquid and is most often simply
disposed of by processing plants. However, as a fruit
product, pomace contains an assortment of healthful
fruit constituents such as polyphenol antioxidents,
carotenoids, fiber and other bioactive compounds,
Choudhury noted.
“Until now, there has
been very little commercial utilization of these
co-products that could be profitable to processing
companies,” Choudhury said.
The project goal was to
develop and evaluate an extrusion process for a new
generation of food products from peach and nectarine
pomace.
Extrusion technology is
used commercially for food products from chips and
cheese puffs to breakfast cereals, Choudhury noted. And
while the technology is not new, the application of
fruit pomace is. A major part of this research involved
developing a process for drying and formulating the
peach pomace into a substrate that would be suitable for
extrusion.
Choudhury said multiple
settings of the equipment (temperature, pressure, flow
rate, etc.) work comprehensively to affect the density,
volume, porosity, color and taste of the final product.
The formula developed by
Choudhury and Sarkar included dried peach pomace mixed
with rice flour, which enhanced the consistency of the
mix and the extruded product.
“We have established
quite firmly that we can use peach pomace to make an
excellent breakfast cereal,” Choudhury said. “Now we
need to establish process parameters that will enable us
to produce a consistent and flavorful product.”
Second year work on the
project continues, with Choudhury at Cal Poly.
Additional research will seek to fine tune the extrusion
process with continuing adjustments of various processes
to enhance the final product.
Sarkar’s work on the
project was part of a successful thesis project entitled
“Peach Pomace Utilization Using Twin Screw Extrusion
Processing.” Sarkar earned admission to Purdue
University, where he is pursuing his doctorate in
nanoscience.
This project has been
partially funded by the California State University
Agricultural Research Institute.
For more information,
contact Choudhury at
gchoudhu@calpoly.edu.
(Source: Fresno State press release, 11/18/2011)
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