AONLA RESEARCH WORK

Aonla (Emblica officinalis Gaertn), the king of fruits, popularly known as "Indian Gooseberry", is a small-sized minor tropical fruit grown widely in North India. India ranks first in the world in aonla area and production volume. It is considered to be a "wonder fruit for health" because of its unique properties. The Indian gooseberry (aonla) may be an important fruit of 21st century due to its high medicinal as well as nutritional value, high productivity per unit area, suitability to various kinds of wasteland and potentiality for processing into quality products which has tremendous potential for export purposes. Aonla production is expected to rise phenomenally in the near future providing great opportunities for the processing sector. Mostly aonla fruits are used to make preserve, pickles still proper attention has not yet been given for the significance of this fruit into suitable products like jam, squash, toffee, shreds, sauce and ready-to-serve etc. Further, the common unit operation such as thermal softening, pulping and syruping etc. are instrumental in destroying or leaching the major portion of vitamin C and phenol during the processing.