Nutritional characteristics evaluation of Malaysian commercial pineapple cultivars

Abstract

Pineapple industry is one of the important agricultural sectors in Malaysia with 76 cultivars planted throughout the country. This study aims to generate useful nutritional information as well as evaluating physicochemical, biochemical and organoleptic properties of ‘Josapine’, ‘Morris’, ‘Sarawak’, ‘MD2’ and ‘Crystal’ pineapple (Ananas comosus). The pineapple varieties were collected at commercial maturity stage (20-40% yellowish of fruit peel) and the edible portion of the fruit was used as sample for evaluation. From the results obtained, ‘MD2’ showed highest sweetness and lowest astringency index in terms of physicochemical properties and also had highest content of bioactive compounds, antioxidant capacities and bromelain activity with respect to biochemical properties compared to other cultivars. Furthermore, the highest scores for overall sensory attributes also confirmed the preference of ‘MD2’ over all the other cultivars. Hence, ‘MD2’ compared very well with other pineapple cultivars and has great potential in the commercial market. The bioactive compounds were highly and significantly correlated with antioxidant capacities and bromelain activity suggests that these bioactive compounds have contributed to the antioxidant and enzymatic activities of pineapples. All the mean differences observed between the cultivars were statistically significant.