Investigation on quality properties of jam, marmalade and fruit leather produced from pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata)

Pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata) is an agricultural product produced for 10.000 years. It is a fruit that can be grown in temperate climate and it was first cultivated in America and then spread to Asia and Europe. When the world production rate is evaluated, it is seen that the most production is made in China. Pumpkin is consumed mostly as a dessert in Turkey and is harvested generally in October, but released for consumption in winter. Besides being consumed directly, pumpkin is used as a raw material for making bread, soup, cookies, puree, jam and syrup, after being processed. This process increases the quality and extends the shelf life of pumpkin. Alternative processing methods should be developed to consume this high nutritive fruit in different periods of time. In this study, jam, marmalade and fruit leather is produced from pumpkin in laboratory scale. Analysis of total phenolic (TP), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), HMF, total acidity, total and invert sugar and some physical features of these products were carried out. In terms of total acidity (TA), higher acidic content is determined in fruit leather (4,29%) than marmalade and jam. It is identified that the samples of marmalade (39,07 mg/kg) contain high level HMF in comparison with fruit leather and jam. While total phenolic material composition of marmalade is observed as 71,92 µg GAE/g, it is 63,33 µg GAE/g in jam and 113,23 µg GAE/g in fruit leather. The highest value of antioxidant amount (24,99) is detected in marmalade samples. As a result, it is suggested that jum, marmalade and fruit leather.