ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF (PhD) — Food Processing Technology, Food Safety & Quality, Processing and Food Engineering · India · ICAR through the National Testing Agency
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersProcessed products from fruits and vegetables: juices and concentrates, jams, jellies and marmalades, pickles, sauces and ketchup, dried and frozen products, canned products and minimally processed produce, with pectin chemistry and by-product recovery. Packhouse and storage engineering are in Agricultural Engineering's post-harvest-horticultural-crops.
In the exams: GATE XE-G Section 3 (fruits and vegetables processing; pectin from fruit wastes); ICAR AIEEA-PG Code 18 Unit III; ICAR AICE 35.a Unit 2
ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF (PhD) — Food Processing Technology, Food Safety & Quality, Processing and Food Engineering
35.a Unit 2 names pectin, jams and jellies alongside processing of horticultural produce. Expect deeper questions on pectin structure–function, enzyme kinetics in tomato break and juice cloud, acrylamide control in potato products, fresh-cut physiology and MAP, membrane clarification and concentration, and design of by-product recovery.
How our questions for ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF spread across the units of Fruit & Vegetable Processing Technology. Difficulty: 0 easy, 19 medium, 21 hard.
| Fruit juices: extraction, clarification, concentration and packaging | 4 | |
| Pectin chemistry and gel formation | 4 | |
| By-product utilisation: pectin, peel and pomace | 4 | |
| Composition and processing quality of fruits and vegetables | 3 | |
| Squashes, cordials, nectars and ready-to-serve beverages | 3 | |
| Jams, jellies, marmalades and fruit preserves | 3 | |
| Pickles, chutneys and sauces | 3 | |
| Tomato products: juice, puree, paste and ketchup | 3 | |
| Potato products | 3 | |
| Preparation for processing: washing, peeling, cutting and blanching | 2 | |
| Candied fruits | 2 | |
| Canning of fruits and vegetables | 2 | |
| Dehydrated and frozen fruits and vegetables | 2 | |
| Minimally processed fresh-cut produce | 2 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
A plant shortens its blanch time so that only half the peroxidase is inactivated. The most likely result in frozen storage is
B. Faster off-flavour than with no blanch at all
Under-blanching damages cell structure and releases enzymes from their compartments without destroying them, so reactions can run faster than in raw tissue. Freezing slows enzymes but does not stop them, and a partial blanch gives no reliable texture or drip benefit.
Further reading: Fellows, Food Processing Technology
100 kg of RTS beverage must contain 10% juice, 10% TSS and 0.3% acidity as citric acid. The juice used has 10 °Brix and 1.0% acidity. Ignoring the soluble solids contributed by added acid, how much sugar must be added?
C. 9.0 kg
The 10 kg of juice brings 10 × 0.10 = 1.0 kg of soluble solids. The beverage needs 100 × 0.10 = 10 kg, so sugar = 10 − 1 = 9.0 kg. 10 kg ignores the juice's own solids; 1.0 kg is the solids from juice; 8.0 kg double-counts them.
Further reading: Girdhari Lal, Siddappa and Tandon, Preservation of Fruits and Vegetables
An HM pectin jelly fails to set although sugar and pectin are adequate. The pH is 4.2. The most likely reason is that
A. Carboxyl groups stay ionised, so the chains repel
HM pectin gels when acid suppresses ionisation of free carboxyl groups so chains can associate; above about pH 3.5 they remain charged and repel, so no gel forms. Calcium bridging is the LM pectin mechanism, inversion does not stop setting, and heating does not form protopectin.
Further reading: May, Industrial pectins, Carbohydrate Polymers
Amidated low-methoxyl pectin is made by
A. Treating pectin with ammonia
Ammonia de-esterifies pectin and replaces some methyl esters with amide groups, giving amidated LM pectin that needs less calcium and forms thermoreversible gels. Methanol and acid would add esters, aluminium salts are a precipitation route, and calcium chloride gels LM pectin rather than modifying it.
Further reading: May, Industrial pectins, Carbohydrate Polymers
Why is vacuum boiling sometimes used for high-quality jams?
D. Lower boiling temperature saves colour and flavour
Under vacuum the jam boils at a lower temperature, so browning, pectin degradation and loss of fresh flavour are reduced. Lower temperature actually reduces inversion, pectin is still needed, and the product still needs hot filling or pasteurisation.
Further reading: Girdhari Lal, Siddappa and Tandon, Preservation of Fruits and Vegetables
A brine is at 40 degrees salinometer. Taking a saturated salt solution of about 26.4% salt as 100 degrees, its salt content is about
D. 10.6%
Degrees salinometer scale linearly to saturation: 40 ÷ 100 × 26.4 = 10.6% salt. 40% reads the degree as a percentage; 26.4% is saturated brine; 6.6% divides 26.4 by 4.
Further reading: Srivastava and Kumar, Fruit and Vegetable Preservation
Canned pears with a pH close to 4.6 are processed in boiling water after citric acid is added to the syrup. This practice is called
A. Acidification
Adding acid to bring a borderline fruit clearly below pH 4.6 is acidification; it makes a boiling-water process adequate. Exhausting removes air, syneresis is gel weeping, and inversion is hydrolysis of sucrose.
Further reading: Fellows, Food Processing Technology
Potatoes stored at 4 °C give dark chips. The reason is
B. Cold-induced sweetening raises reducing sugars
Below about 8–10 °C, starch breakdown to sugars outpaces their use, so glucose and fructose accumulate and brown during frying. Starch granules remain, asparagine levels are not the main change, and dry matter is not lowered by water uptake.
Further reading: Talburt and Smith, Potato Processing
Potato slices are blanched in hot water before frying chips mainly to
B. Leach out reducing sugars
Hot-water blanching leaches glucose and fructose from the slice surface, lowering browning and acrylamide. It is not a salting step, does not fully gelatinise starch in a chip slice, and is unrelated to sprout inhibitors.
Further reading: Talburt and Smith, Potato Processing
In making dehydrated potato granules, part of the dry product is mixed back with freshly cooked mash (the add-back process). The purpose is to
C. Dry the mash gently while keeping cells intact
Mixing cooked mash with dry granules lowers its moisture so it can be granulated and air dried without rupturing cells. Intact cells keep starch inside, so the reconstituted mash is mealy rather than gluey. Free starch makes mash pasty, which is what the process avoids.
Further reading: Talburt and Smith, Potato Processing
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