Vol. 8, Issue 12, Part P (2024)

The term ‘nutrabeverage’ was applied to the product with increased amount of nutrients that was produced by alcoholic fermentation using yeast strains, in which sugar was converted into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Mahua flower based nutrabeverage provides all the therapeutic nutritional benefits of mahua flowers and further, enriches during the process of fermentation. The release of amino acids and other nutrients from yeast during fermentation increases the nutritional value of nutrabeverage. The mahua flowers are nutritionally balanced as a rich source of proteins, carbohydrates, dietary fibers in addition to minerals like calcium and iron. In this study nutrabeverage was prepared from dried mahua flower extract, the juice was filtered and transferred to the fermenter and Saccharomyces cerevisiae was used an inoculum and allowed for fermentation. The effect of physicochemical characteristics of flower extract on fermentation process as well as process conditions were optimized through sensory and nutritional analysis of the nutrabeverage. It was concluded that the optimal fermentation process conditions such as temperature, pH, and incubation period and inoculum concentration for the production of nutrabeverage were 30°C, 4.5, 72 hrs and 6% respectively. Nutrabeverage was tested through sensory evaluation against commercial control sample as well as nutrabeverage produced at different fermentation conditions. The nutrabeverage produced from raw mahua flower extract at above mentioned optimized conditions was accepted with respect to sensory qualities like color, taste, flavor, clarity and overall acceptability. It was concluded that mahua flower as a substrate has potential for making good quality fermented nutrabeverage.