Engineering Properties of Pomegranate Fruits and Arils

Pomegranate (Punica granatum) is very useful and important pharmacological fruit belongs to family Lythraceae. It is an important fruit crop of arid and semiarid regions of the world. The determination of engineering property of pomegranate fruit and arils is important for equipment design. Some physical properties like geometric mean diameter, sphericity, surface area, volume, bulk density, porosity, hardness, etc. were determined. The average length, width and thickness of pomegranate fruit are 65.9mm, 68.5mm and 67.1mm respectively. The geometric mean diameter, sphericity, surface area and volume are 64.39mm, 0.97, 13.02mm² and 138.82 cm³ respectively. Bulk density for pomegranate fruit and arils were 0.524 and 0.555 respectively. Some textural properties like hardness (N), Deformation (mm), % deformation at hardness and Springiness (mm) were calculated by using texture analyzer. The hardness of whole pomegranate compression test is 4.13N and the hardness of aril in TPA was cycle is i) 10.01 N and cycle ii) 8.77 N and in compression test hardness is 4.55N. Whereas Deformation of whole pomegranate in TPA and compression was 1.98 mm and 4.60 mm and Deformation of aril in TPA and compression was 1.98 mm and 2.00 mm respectively.