Volume 4 • Issue 2• 1000203 J Food Process Technol ISSN:2157-7110 JFPT, an open access journal Open Access Research Article Dhamsaniya and Varshney, J Food Process Technol 2013, 4:2 DOI: 10.4172/2157-7110.1000203 Keywords: Banana juice; Whey; Beverage; RTS; Sensory characteristics Abbreviation: RTS: Ready to Serve Introduction Banana (Musa paradisiaca L.) is one of the most widely grown fruit, cultivated over 170 countries along the tropic and sub-tropics of the Capricorn. Afer ripening, banana fruit is highly susceptible to deterioration. Its considerable amount is wasted due to lack of efcient processing techniques that are unique to ripe banana. Very few processed products are available in the market, primarily due to difculty in retaining the characteristics color, favor and texture during the processing of ripe banana [1]. Hence, it is utmost important to process the large amount of surplus ripe banana fruits available in the entire banana growing regions for preventing their loss afer ripening. Milk whey is one of the highly nutritious by-products obtained from the dairy industry producing cheese, chhanna and paneer. It constitutes almost 45-50 percent of total milk solids, 70 percent of milk sugar mainly lactose, 20 percent of milk proteins, 70-90 percent of milk minerals and almost all the water soluble vitamins originally present in milk [2,3]. It resulted into unraveling the secrets of whey proteins and other components and established a sound basis for their nutritional and functional value [4]. Several authors have investigated the possibility of utilizing the milk whey in the fruit beverage preparation [5-9]. Increased awareness in health issues leads to increase the consumption of fruit juices and other natural products as an alternate to the traditional cafeine containing beverages such as tea, cofee or other sof drinks. Accompanying the increase in quantity of consumption, there has been a parallel increase in the variety of fruit juices and beverages ofered for sale in the market [5]. Sof beverage industry has made signifcant progress during the last two decades in terms of rise in production and consumption; however, there is a limited range of fruit juice based RTS beverages available in the Indian market. Many types of syrups and sof drinks containing artifcial fruit favors are well known throughout the world. Te basic factor considered is the nutritive and therapeutic values, which make them popular and acceptable [10,11]. At present fruit beverages are generally synthetic favored, bottled and sold in the market. If this could be substituted with fruit juice and dairy whey, it will be more benefcial to the consumer, dairy industries and beverage manufacturers as well as fruit growers [12]. *Corresponding author: Dr. N. K. Dhamsaniya, Technical Offcer, Junagadh Ag- ricultural University, Junagadh-362001, Gujarat, India, Tel. +91-285-2671784; Fax +91-285-2672004; E-mail: nkdhamsania@yahoo.com Received November 08, 2012; Accepted November 28, 2012; Published December 08, 2012 Citation: Dhamsaniya NK, Varshney AK (2013) Development and Evaluation of Whey Based RTS Beverage from Ripe Banana Juice. J Food Process Technol 4: 203. doi:10.4172/2157-7110.1000203 Copyright: © 2013 Dhamsaniya NK, et al. This is an open-access article distrib- uted under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the origi- nal author and source are credited. Abstract The investigation was aimed to develop a delicious and nutritious RTS beverage from the ripe banana juice and milk whey. The M. arvensis extract was used as a natural favoring agent. The proportion of banana juice, M. arvensis extract and milk whey was varied from 5-15 ml, 1-5 ml and 72-86 ml per 100 ml of the prepared beverage, respectively. The screening of beverage samples was done on the basis of their physicochemical and sensory characteristics. As a result of various studies conducted for optimizing the proportions; an acceptable whey banana RTS beverage was prepared having 15 ml banana juice, 3 ml M. arvensis extract, 8 g sugar powder and 77 ml milk whey per 100 ml of the prepared beverage, respectively. The developed RTS beverage could be recommended for the large scale production at industrial level. Development and Evaluation of Whey Based RTS Beverage from Ripe Banana Juice N. K. Dhamsaniya* and A. K. Varshney Department of Processing and Food Engineering, College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Junagadh Agricultural University, Junagadh-362 001, Gujarat, India Terefore, it was found very interesting to utilize the milk whey as a water replacer for the development of a new delicious and nutritious RTS beverage from the ripe banana juice. Te use of milk whey produces of-favor in the beverages. Te Mentha arvensis extract is commonly used as a natural favoring agent in most of whey based fruit beverages to compensate the of-favor of whey. It also acts as a good appetizer; acceptable to consumers and at the same time makes the product more palatable [13]. Looking to the fast growing market segment of functional beverages, it was felt appropriate to use the M. arvensis extract as natural favoring agents in the development of whey based RTS beverage from ripe banana juice to fetch the higher market demand. Materials and Methods ‘Grand Naine’ is a popular cultivar of banana grown mostly in all export oriented countries of Asia, South America and Africa [1]. Te banana fruit having best quality, well matured and ready for ripening of ‘Grand Naine’ cultivar were procured from a local fruit market of Junagadh (Gujarat, India). Te fruits were allowed to ripe under the natural conditions at room temperature. Te banana fruits at ripening stage VII, as described by Robinson [14], were used for the juice preparation. Preparation of banana juice Natural banana juice was prepared without imparting any chemical/ enzymatic treatments as per the method suggested by Dhamsaniya [15]. Te process fow diagram for the preparation of natural banana juice is shown in fgure 1. Te ripe banana fruits were washed with the chlorinated water followed by manual peeling and cutting into the Journal of Food Processing & Technology J o u r n a l o f F o o d P r o c e s s i n g & T e c h n o l o g y ISSN: 2157-7110