Studies on physical attributes and processing suitability of sapota cultivars

Sapota (Manilkara achras L.) is one of the major crops of India, commonly known as Chikoo and has good nutritional properties. The physical properties of two varieties of sapota viz. cricket ball and kallipati were determined to facilitate the designing of grading machines. It was found that the average weight and values of length, breadth and thickness for cricket ball were 51.63g, 41.7mm, 46.2mm and 46.3mm whereas for kallipati they were 58.13g, 46.9 mm, 46.8 and 47.0mm respectively. The TSS values for cricket ball was 26.25 and for kallipati 25.37°B and their respective acidity were 0.16% and 0.18%. Jam was prepared from two varieties of sapota viz. cricket ball and kallipati to determine their processing suitability. The sensory evaluation of the samples revealed that the jam prepared from cricket ball variety obtained higher overall acceptability scores (7.86) on a 9 point hedonic scale owing to the higher values for appearance and taste. The B:C ratio for sapota jam was found to be 1.87 showing its viability for processing the fruit into jam.