Nutritional Composition and Sensory Attributes of Functional Aqualetes Fortified with Cymbopogon citratus and Coffea arabica

Herbal plants like Cymbopogon citratus (Lemon grass) and Coffea arabica (Green coffee) possess various phytochemicals that can modulate numerous diseases and their extracts can be added in fruit aqualetes that may improve the health and fulfills their nutritional requirements.The nutritional constituents such as moisture, crude ash, crude protein, crude fat, crude fibre, carbohydrate, iron, calcium and magnesium were analysed according to standard AOAC methods, preliminary phytoconstituents analysis and lastly, the different aqualetes viz; Pineapple , Pomegranate and Orange were developed by the incorporation of singly and equiproportioned mixture of Cymbopogon citratus and Coffea arabica and their sensory evaluation was performed by 5 point composite score and 9 point hedonic scale through semi-trained panel. In the nutritional analysis, the content of crude ash (7.83±0.94g/100g), crude protein (20.5±0.01g/100g), calcium (14.1±1.40mg/100g) and magnesium (22.08±1.03 mg/100g) were significantly higher in Cymbopogon citratus than Coffea arabica at P≤0.05 level. Preliminary phytochemical screening depicted that aqueous extract of Cymbopogon citratus contain all the bioactive compounds except terpenoids but saponins as well as terpenoids were absent in coffea arabica. Among all fruit aqualetes developed, the pomegranate aqualete enriched with 5% Cymbopogon citratus was scored highest value (8.5±0.51) which was followed by 5% equiproportioned mixture (7.1±0.51) when compared to standard aqualete. The sensory data suggest that pomegranate herbal aqualetes were more acceptable and comparable to standard while other herbal aqualetes (pineapple and orange) were not acceptable by panel.It is concluded that the Cymbopogon citratus had superior nutritional, phytochemical as well as sensory characteristics than Coffea arabica. Thus it can be used as a valuable ingredient for the production of herbal fruit aqualetes with natural bequest of nutraceuticals which may showed its pharmacological and therapeutic potential apart from its nutritional essence.