Fourteenth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

The largest cocoa waste, namely cocoa pod husk (CPH), has quite large potential to be used as a source of pectin. This research aims to determine the optimum condition of subcritical water extraction (SWE) conditions to get maximum yield of CPH pectin and compare the characteristics of pectin obtained with the conventional extraction (CE) method using citric acid. The statistical response surface methodology (RSM) with Box–Behnken experimental design (BBD) was used to establish the optimum condition of the subcritical water extraction process and assess the impact of specific process variables, such as temperature (ranging from 100 to 120 °C), extraction duration (ranging from 10 to 30 minutes), and solid-liquid ratio (SLR) (ranging from 1:30 to 2:30 w/v), on the yield of pectin. At optimum extraction conditions of 120oC for 10 minutes with 2:30 w/v SLR, the highest pectin yield of 6.58% was obtained; this value was found to be in close proximity to the predicted value of 7.29%. CPH pectin yield was significantly influenced by the linear effect of extraction temperature (X1) and extraction time (X2), interaction of extraction temperature (X1) and extraction time (X2), interaction of extraction time (X2) and SLR (X3), as well as the interaction effects of extraction temperature (X1) and SLR (X3). The RSM model showed exceptional accuracy and reliability in determining the correlation between pectin yield and extraction process variables, including time, temperature, and SLR. This study reveals that SWE can serve as a practicable and eco-friendly technique for extracting pectin from CPH.