Impact of Maturity on Fruit Physicochemical ...

Impact of Maturity on Fruit Physicochemical Characteristics: A Study on Tumba

Author Name : Priyanka Rohilla , Rekha , Rakesh Gehlot

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56025/IJARESM.2023.11923977

ABSTRACT Traditional medicinal approaches like Indian Ayurveda, European and Chinese medicinal systems etc. are known to prevent and cure diseases using plants as food or medicines. World Health Organization has made an attempt to identify the medicinal plants used globally and listed more than 20,000 species. Cucurbitaceae family widely distributed in the tropical and subtropical regions, is considered as important in plant kingdom because of rich source of phytochemicals, bioactive compounds along with other nutrients i.e. vitamins and minerals. A lot of research has been done on plants of this family but Citrullus colocynthis (L.) Schrad (Tumba) is an underutilized plant even though the parts of the plant has several biological activities such as antioxidant, antidiabetic, antimicrobial, antinflammatory, antidiarrheal, antihypertension, antiasthamatic, antihyperlipidemic, analgesic, antiulcer, anticonvulsant and insecticidal activity. Tumba, an annual or perennial herb generally yields about 15 to 30 fruits per plant and inside cavity of the fruit is filled with seeds and dry, spongy and very bitter pulp. The aim of present research work was to study the effect of fruit maturity on various parameters of tumba fruit and seed. With the fruit maturation a decrease in total chlorophyll and increase in total carotenoids content was observed and whole fruit was analyzed for preliminary phytochemicals screening.