Sensory Evaluation and Overall Acceptance of Processed Products of Underutilised Fruits of Sikkim Himalayas

Underutilised fruit crops of sikkim has a great potential to be made into processed products but is not explored much. Sensory evaluation is one technique through which one can release a product out of these potential fruit crops. Diploknema butyraceae, Hippophae salicyfolia, Elaegnus latifolia, Docynia indica andMachilus edulis are the potential fruits taken for the study. The present study focuses on the acceptability of different products made from these fruits. Sensory evaluation was done using the hedonic scale which ranged from 1 - 9. For the parameters like flavor, color, aroma and appearance, the best result were obtained in ketchup of (Elaegnus latifolia) for flavor, jam (Hippophae salicifolia) and juice (Hippophae salicifolia) for color, ketchup (Elaegnus latifolia) and juice (Hippophae salicifolia) for aroma, and ketchup (Elaegnus latifolia) for appearance, jam (Hippophae salicifolia) and juice (hippophae salicifolia), ketchup (Elaegnus latifolia) and juice (Hippophae salicifolia), and ketchup (Elaegnus latifolia).

The overall acceptability was also assessed and the best product was obtained in juice (Hippophae salicifolia) with mean overall acceptability as 7.33 followed by juice (Hippophae salicifolia) having 7.00 as the mean overall acceptability. On the other hand, the products prepared from Machilus edulis had the lowest scoring among all. Thus, the results obtained from this study can be used for future works under the related topics.