Author : Tuates Jr., Andres M.; Rudolfo, Rachel; Veneracion, Princess D.; Carriedo, Aileen G.; Ligisan, Aileen; Capariño, Ofero A.

Summary : The cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) pod is generally composed of husk and mucilaginous pulp surrounding the bean. About 90% of the pod is discarded as waste and remains underexploited. The pod husks are traditionally disposed to rot in the farms resulting in a waste management problem, especially because the demand for chocolate increases. An economical and environment-friendly way to deal with this is to extract pectin from the pod husks. The main objective of the study was to develop an extraction process that will provide the highest pectin yield and determine its physico-chemical properties, pectin identification test, methoxyl content, galacturonic acid content and gel strength. The cacao clones used in the study were BR 25, F1, and UF18. The husks of each clone were hydrolyzed using three different acids (i.e., citric acid, hydrochloric acid (HCl), and tartaric acid). Results showed that the highest pectin yield obtained was using tartaric acid, followed by citric acid and hydrochloric acid across cacao variety with a mean value of 12.28, 2.23, and 1.54, respectively. Likewise, the color of the extracted pectin had brown with different saturation and lightness. Tartaric acid had the lightest color, while hydrochloric acid had the darkest color. The TA-hydrolyzed pectin has the smallest particle sizes but with the highest specific surface area. This implies that the pectins mentioned above may have higher efficiency to serve as a gelling agent than other extracted pectins. The methoxyl content, galacturonic acid, and gelling strength of cacao pod husk based pectin range from 6.98%-10.82%; 86.20%-97.33% and 0.02-0.05Newton, respectively.