Post harvest hot water immersion treatment as sustainable approach for artificial curing of immature dates to reduce wastage.

Unfavorable climatic conditions hinder the natural ripening of date fruit, resulting in significant wastage. This study highlighted the impact of artificial ripening on quality of immature dates (cvs. Khadrawi, Jihadi, Hillawi, and Mansi) which were pretreated with hot water (95 °C) immersion (HWI) technique for different time intervals (0 s, 30s, 1, 2 and 3 min) and dried at 48 ± 2 °C for 48 h. HWI significantly affected quality of dates; losses being higher with longer immersion intervals. Pre-treated dates (HWI-30 s) showed improved color and higher ripening index; with considerable sugars, fibre (10.00-12.59 %), protein (3.08-3.87 %), phenolics (214.3-507.65 mg GAE/100 g), flavonoids (209.31-454.57 mg QE/100 g), carotenoids (115.98-172.63 mg/100 g), antioxidants (606.62-926.16 μg TE/g), macro (potassium 703.85-860.93 mg/100 g) and micro (iron 4.0-5.85 mg/100 g) minerals. Organoleptic evaluation revealed higher acceptability for Khadrawi and Jihadi cultivars after HWI-30s.FTIR spectra indicated presence of phenols, organic acids, sugars and dietary fibre components retained in the HWI pretreated date samples.