POSTHARVEST QUALITY AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF KARANDA (CARISSA CARANDAS) FRUIT

The karanda plant (Carissa carandas) is an evergreen shrub belonging to the Apocynaceae family.
There is lack of reports in literature on the physico-chemical characteristics and antioxidant potential of the karanda fruit.
A study was conducted to determine postharvest quality and antioxidant activity of karanda fruit at three maturity stages, which were whitish-pink, red and purple stages.
The experimental design was a complete randomized design and repeated thrice.
Analysis of variance was used to test differences in postharvest characteristics and antioxidant activities.
Tukey’s HSD test was used to determine significant differences of measures.
Results showed that there were significant differences between the postharvest quality and antioxidant activity of karanda fruit.
The lightness of karanda peel declined while the hue values showed colour changed from red to purple as maturation progressed.
The lightness of pulp also decreased and colour change from yellow to red as maturation progressed.
The firmness and titratable acidity decreased while the soluble solids concentration (SSC) increased as maturation occurred.
The purple-stage karanda fruit exhibited the highest total phenolic content and antioxidant activity evaluated based on the DPPH radical-scavenging activity, FRAP and ABTS assays.
The study showed karanda fruit harvested at the purple stage attained high SSC and has strong antioxidant activity.
Therefore, this fruit has great potential to be promoted as a nutritious food.

VII International Postharvest Symposium

X.F. Chai, P. Ding

colour, soluble solids concentration, titratable acidity, DPPH, ABTS, FRAP

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2013.1012.18