A Review on the Optimisation of Enzymatic Treatment in Tropical Fruit Juice: Impacts on Physicochemical and Functional Properties

The production of fruit juice often faces challenges in achieving high juice quality due to its high viscosity, pectin, and polysaccharide content. Enzymatic treatment has proved to be one of the most effective approaches for improving the juice yield, quality and nutritional properties. Enzymes such as pectinase, cellulase, and hemicellulase are commonly used in fruit juice production to degrade cell wall components, thereby enhancing the stability and quality of fruit juice. Optimisation of enzymatic treatment conditions, such as enzyme concentration, incubation time, and temperature, using a second-order central composite design (RSM), was crucial in achieving the desired quality outcome. From an extensive collection of literature and research, this comprehensive review explores the impact of optimised enzymatic treatment conditions on the physicochemical properties, including juice yield, viscosity, clarity, turbidity, total soluble solids (TSS), and the bioactive compounds of antioxidant activity and total phenolic content (TPC) of tropical fruit juices. Key findings suggest that different fruits all have different enzymatic treatment conditions due to the dependency of this treatment towards the pectin, cellulose, hemicellulose and other polysaccharide contents in the fruit. This selected treatment shows effectiveness in tackling the stated issues.