Development Of A Vegan Yogurt From Sprouted Lotus (Nelumbo Nucifera Gaertn.) Seeds With Different Lucuma Fruit (Pouteria Lucuma) Powder Ratios And Determination Of Their Characteristics

Abstract

The study is carried out to develop a new yogurt recipe with no traces of dairy products using lotus seeds. In addition, the ratios of lucuma fruit powder at three different concentrations of lucuma powder added into yogurt: 1, 5, and 9% volume/dry weight as a natural sweetener and the effects of sprouting-fermenting techniques on the characteristics of vegan yogurt are also determined. In each lucuma powder ratio, the sprouted yogurts showed higher values in comparison with un-sprouted yogurts in all cases. Besides, the increasing lucuma powder increased the total viable cell count, titratable acidity, protein content, viscosity, acidification rate and total carotenoid content. The 9% lucuma-sprouted yogurt had the highest total phenolic, carotenoid content (420.56  2.25 mgGAE/100g and 420.56  2.25 g/g respectively) and antioxidant activity (103.15 1.73 mg AAE/100g) compared to plain-un-sprouted yogurt (67.85  4.22 mgGAE/100g, 3.19  0.05 g/g and 32.03 1.17 mgAAE/100g, respectively). The sensory evaluation was performed, and the result shows that 5% and 9% lucuma powder added into yogurt resulted in comparable overall acceptability to cow milk yogurt. Therefore, the 5% and 9% lucuma powder blended into sprouted lotus seeds yogurt can be used as nutritional and bioactive sources and its potential for commercialization.