Design, Development and Testing of a Peeler Cum Cutter Machine for Tender Jackfruit

Abstract

Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), is native to Southeast Asia. India is believed to be the land of Jackfruit and from centuries it has been play a significant role in Indian agriculture and culture. Jackfruit is widely distributed fruit crop in India. The young fruit is used as vegetable, which contain high amount of vitamins and minerals. Jackfruit is found to be a novel, highly nutritive and inexpensive edible fruit available in all parts of India including Odisha, Bihar and West Bengal. However, due to lack of proper processing technology the marketing and transportation of jackfruit is a challenge. Existing traditional practices results in higher cost of processing, because these are time consuming, labour intensive processes, low processing capacity. The physical and chemical properties of the product are helpful in planning and fabrication of equipment or structure for transportation, handling, processing, storing and even for value addition and quality control. The research was conducted on two varieties of tender jackfruit [hard (HV) and soft variety (SV)]. Based on maturity, the tender jackfruits were divided into four stages (i.e. Stage 1, 2, 3 and 4) and their physical, mechanical, chemical and textural properties were determined for both the varieties. Physical properties like weight, length, diameter, geometric mean and arithmetic mean diameter were increasing with the increase in size for both the varieties. There was a significant increase in TSS in both the varieties (HV: 1.5 ± 0.02 to 5.1 ± 0.03; SV: 2.7 ± 0.05 to 7.1 ± 0.05 oBrix) from stage 1 to 4 because of ripening of fruit (at level p<0.05 of significance). The hardness, fracturability and springiness increased with maturity but on the counterpart, there is a decrease in adhesiveness, cohesiveness, chewiness and gumminess. The nutritional properties and energy values were inevitably increased whereas vitamin content was decreased from stage 1 to 4 in both the varieties. Jackfruit peeling cum cutting machine was designed by using SolidWorks-2015 software and fabricated for tender jackfruit. It is capable of washing, peeling and cutting of tender jackfruit effectively. It can process all sizes of tender jackfruit with the effective throughput capacity of 25 kg/hr. All food contact parts of the machine are of Stainless Steel- Grade 304. The operating conditions such as forward speed of peeling arm, rotating speed of jackfruit and rotating speed of cutter were optimized for maximum efficiency of machine and minimum loss in processing of tender jackfruits. The processing activities like washing, sorting, peeling and cutting enhanced oxidative stress in fresh cut jackfruit during storage. Moreover, it also has the ill effects on quality of fresh-cut tender jackfruit with an increase in microbial contaminations, excessive tissue softening, and depletion of phytochemicals and browning during the storage. Hence, this study was conducted as a solution to the above problem. The synergistic effect of pre-treatment (i.e. blanching of peeled tender jackfruit slices in optimised conditions) with different storage conditions (i.e. room, refrigerated and freeze) with different packaging films (i.e. High density polyethylene, Low density polyethylene and Polypropylene) were determined. The packaging of jackfruit slices reportedly increase the shelf life of fresh-cut tender jackfruit slices. The modified atmospheric packaging was also used to increase the shelf life of fresh cut tender jackfruit slices. From the response variables, the best combination of independent variables resulted in 10% concentration of CO2 and 20% concentration of O2 for HDPE packaging film. At these conditions, the sample can be preserved for 15 days at 5±1°C and for 20 days at -18±1°C. However, during storage, changes in physicochemical properties of fresh cut tender jackfruit was related to change in its colour as well. Colorimeter measurements are best for the samples with homogeneous colour. However, for samples with non-homogenous colour or large size (like fruits and vegetables), the colorimeters are inappropriate and inaccurate.The aim for this study to quantify the amount of browning in fresh cut tender jackfruit slices by using image analysis technique and justified by comparing them with existing techniques like sensory examination, enzyme activity, and colorimeter. It can be concluded from the results that, rate of browning was rapid in fresh cut tender jackfruit slices in control and normally packed groups. Correlation co-efficient of 0.96, which showed that image analysis system is an accurate and highly consistent method to quantify the color of fruits and vegetables. The value for Return on investment (ROI) for the machine is 209.61%. Pay-back period of the investment is very less, i.e. 34 working days. Thus the fabricated machine can highly be considered due to lower operating cost with low breakeven point and very high return on investment. Cost of minimal processing and packaging of tender jackfruit slices is ₹3.46INR (0.05 US$) per kg. [math mode missing closing $]