Proximate Characterization of discarded fruits and their valorization to obtain pectin

Abstract: The global production of food, particularly fruits like banana, Citrus, and pineapple, generates over 1 billion metric tonnes of waste. A sure way to convert generated fruit residues is by extracting pectin from peels of the fruit wastes. As an objective, the current study, therefore, aimed at determining the proximate composition and furthermore, ascertain the percentage composition and maximum yield of pectin among the discarded fruits collected. A thorough proximate analysis of the various fruit peels were conducted. The eventual outcome of the proximate examination declared that, pineapple had highest moisture content of 11.47%, followed by banana with 11.0% and lastly, Citrus with 9.94%. On the basis of ash/mineral content, pineapple peel, Citrus peel, and banana peel had 8.08%, 4.54% and 16.27% respectively. In terms of crude protein, pineapple gave the highest crude protein of 10.29%, followed by banana with 8.77% whereas Citrus gave 6.57%. After the crude fat determination, banana waste possessed the highest fat content of 13.8%, followed by pineapple, 3.69% and Citrus waste being 2.65%. In the crude fibre analysis, Citrus peel waste had 13.72%, with pineapple peel following closely with 12.05% while powdered banana peel clocked 10.95%. On the basis of Nitrogen-free extract (NFE), Citrus possessed the highest, 62.58%, with pineapple coming second with 54.42% whereas banana gave 39.18%. All the samples possessed equal amount of metabolizable energy of 2959.59 Kcal/Kg in them. The end of the pectin extraction operation revealed that, Citrus peels produced highest pectin (26.2%) followed by pineapple peels with extraction yield of 15.6% whereas banana peels gave 11.2%. The results highlight that discarded fruits contain beneficial phytochemicals such as pectin, which can be useful in the food and pharmaceutical sectors.