Development of watermelon rind jelly and its textural properties

Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) is an agricultural product that commonly been used by the majority of food manufacturers as the main source of various types of watermelon based product including jam, gummy and jelly products. The development of various type of watermelon based product has led to the increase of watermelon waste since manufacturers usually used the watermelon pulp only in order to produce the product whereas the watermelon by-product, the watermelon rind was discarded as it was often viewed and misunderstood as an inedible part of the watermelon. Some studies showed that 36 million tonnes of watermelon rinds, the watermelon waste were generated in 2013 and the situation might be worse over the years as the production of watermelon has increased. In this study, freeze-drying process has helped to preserve pectin content in watermelon rind and enzymatic process able to extract pectin (0.013%, 00.016% and 0.031%) from watermelon rind thus influenced the development of watermelon rind jellies. Textural profile analysis (TPA) has performed on watermelon rind jellies using Texture Analyzer. The produced watermelon rind jellies exhibited lower values in hardness (28.83±4.37, 168.25±2.50, 210.17±43.00) N, cohesiveness (1.84±0.17, 1.25±0.12, and 0.85±0.19), springiness (3.6±3.87, 0.33±0.095, 0.76±0.56) cm, chewiness (3.6±3.87, 3.83±1.72, 6.17±2.06) mJ and gumminess (39.67±18.50, 133.00±10.82, 195.33±41.6) g compared to the commercial jelly. For commercial production, the textures of the watermelon rind jellies can also be modified with additives to get better jellies consistency.