Processing of Spices and Plantation Crops

Plantation crops are high valuable industrial crops that are cultivated extensively in tropical and subtropical conditions and hold great economic significance. They have an enormous amount of potential to employ waste land, such as hilly, arid, coastal and rainfed dry land, to generate foreign exchange, ensure nutritional security and guarantee livelihood security. Main plantation crops grown in India are tea (Camellia sinensis L.), coffee (Coffea arabica L.), coconut (Cocos nucifera), rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), areca nut (Areca catechu L.), oil palm (Elaies guinensis), cashew nut (Anacardium occidentale L.) and cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.). India is the leading producer of most of these plantation crops. Since plantation products are typically consumed only after processing, processing is one of the most significant aspects of all fruit crops. The major goals of coconut processing in the food sector are the development of copra, the extraction of oil and the production of desiccated powder. From a mature nut, areca nut is processed into chali by drying, dehusking, grading and packing. Spices are important components of daily food consumption around the world. Recently these have gained more attention as flavour, preservatives and therapeutic agents. Conventional drying techniques may result in high drying efficiency but involves quality deterioration through loss of volatile substances. Among the dehydration methods, microwave and combined microwave drying, infrared (IR) and combined infrared drying, as well as combined solar drying is considered relatively more efficient techniques in preservation and retention of spices quality. Spices generally have greater flavours and aromas the more flavouring compounds there are in their essential oils or oleoresins. Although conventional processes for extracting essential oils are widely employed in industry, they have numerous drawbacks. However, each method has a limitation. A combination of these methods would be used to get better results.