Optimization of Two-Stage Processing for Natural Fruit Leather Production

Although the market for fresh fruits is constantly growing, shelf stability of fresh produce is the majorlimitation for further business expansion. Therefore, our industrial partner Stirling Fruit Farms has beenexploring the benefits of value-added processing technologies to produce dried foods with extended shelfstability. Recent market research has identified natural fruit leather an ideal value-added substitute for naturalfruits containing all nutritional elements, including dietary fiber, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins andantioxidants as a high-value marketable food product. The specific problem of the company is that currentdrying facility is not able to produce premium quality fruit leather. It was found that fruit leather productionrequires preliminary pureeing of whole fresh fruit to the level of micro- and nanoparticles with minimal qualitylosses. Such high-quality fruit pureeing is possible with hydrothermodynamic (HTD) technology, recentlydeveloped in Dalhousie University. This is a first time partnership between Stirling Fruit Farms and Dr. AlexMartynenko (Dalhousie University), who has significant expertise in both fruit pureeing and fruit drying. Thegoal of this project is to research and develop a novel two-stage processing technology for the production of anatural fruit leather with superior texture and nutritional quality. The project will benefit industry in theirtechnological capacity. The knowledge gained from the project will be used for the optimization of two-stageprocessing for natural fruit leather production. Further commercial scaling of this innovative technology willallow Stirling Fruit Farms to gain a competitive edge in the development of natural fruit products withextended shelf stability. It is expected that premium quality fruit leather will diversify market of naturalvalue-added fruit products, minimize losses of underutilized fruits and eventually increase farmers'profitability. The project implementation will demonstrate the potential of industry-university collaborativeefforts for the innovative process/product research and development, boosting technology transfer to otherindustry players.