Development of Ready-to-Drink Beverage from Calamondin (Citrus mitis Blanco.) Mixed with Its Peel Extract

Abstract

Calamondin, is an acid citrus fruit, which is available throughout the year in Thailand. While the fruit has medicinal property and its peel is fragrant, the juice is very sour so it is not popular to be eaten fresh. The fruit should then be used as an ingredient or processed into such products as a beverage. The objectives of this study were then to prepare a nutritious beverage from calamondin juice with its peel and to investigate selected biological activities of the prepared beverage. The results illustrated that increasing the amount of calamondin juice and its peel helped increase the contents of bioactive substances but resulted in the beverage that was less preferred by the testing panel. The optimum formula of the juice with ‘like moderately’ score contained of 10% calamondin, 5% calamondin peel, 10% sucrose and 75% water by weight. The optimum pasteurization condition was 70°C for 1 min; the beverage then contained vitamin C at 14.90 mg/100 ml, phenolic compounds at 0.20 mg gallic acid equivalent/g and exhibited the antioxidant activity at 13.32 mg ascorbic acid equivalent/g. Storage of the product at 10°C for 15 days did not affect the color, total soluble solids content, pH and total acid content but affected the total vitamin C content, total phenolics content and antioxidant activity. A decrease of 10.54%, 5.26% and 14.19% in the cases of the total vitamin C content, phenolics content and antioxidant activity was noted, respectively.