16.0 Health Products

Custard apple can be processed into a wide range of products from purees, cereal flakes to spray dried powder (Rajarathnam et al., 2003; Shashirekha, et al., 2008).  The Australian custard apple industry has developed two commercial processing factories to produce frozen puree (Figure 10).  We expect that processed products will have a higher concentration of bioactive chemicals than the fresh fruit.  We suggest that custard apple could be promoted as a health product either as the fresh fruit, puree or dried product.



Figure 10. Processed custard apple puree which could be developed into a health product.