Processing jackfruit into ready-to-eat product, new report

Jackfruit is versatile fruit that is sweet when ripe and can also serve as a meat replacement when unripe due to its stringy texture. Growing in the tropical regions of Northern Territory and Far North Queensland, it is something of an underused food source, partly due to its hard, spiky exterior, which makes processing difficult. As each jackfruit can weigh up to 50 kg, transportation can be cumbersome and costly due to the remote location of the source.

A report, Processing jackfruit into ready-to-eat products and ingredients, has now been published by AgriFutures Australia that evaluates how the jackfruit can be better utilised in Australia.

The AgriFutures Australia project commissioned Monash Food Innovation to explore how the industry can drive more consumer demand for the versatile but largely unfamiliar fruit — to find ways to process jackfruit into ready-to-eat products and ingredients.

“Results suggest that Australians are interested in consuming more jackfruit products, due to its high nutritional value and flavour, but a big barrier is the availability of products outside growing regions in northern Australia,” said lead researcher Dr Leonie van ’t Hag from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Monash University.

“There are many opportunities for the Australian jackfruit market to capitalise on the development of new products and to help grow the emerging industry.”

Over one thousand consumers were engaged in testing and evaluating jackfruit to determine new consumer applications, the potential to use greener fruit with the skin and seeds as by-product, and diverse processing applications for different stages of the fruit’s maturity. This included sensory evaluations, based on sense of taste, smell, texture/feel and sight.

van ’t Hag said that the results of this work demonstrated that consumers could accept the fruit widely when processed into different formats including snacks, treats, meat alternatives as well as quick and easy meals.

“Jackfruit has so many benefits; it is high in fibre, minerals such as calcium, phosphorus and magnesium, and it is a good source of vitamin A, B1 and B2,” van ’t Hag said.

“Compared to other tropical fruits the protein content in the seed and young fruit is high. It is a good source of Lysine, an amino acid that vegetarians and vegans can struggle to obtain in their diet. Research also suggests that jackfruit has many classes of phytochemicals that have anti-cancer, anti-hypertensive, anti-ulcer and anti-aging properties.”

The estimated gross value of production of the Australian jackfruit industry is currently $2.6 million. The research has found that if just one quarter of this supply was used in processing, there would be a corresponding increase of $3.3 million in value each year from the existing production.

Additionally, processing the fruit close to production sites would also make transportation easier, according to the report.

Image credit: iStock.com/feellife