Now a days consumption of fruits and vegetables is gaining popularity in the functional food market due to their health-promoting components, dragon fruit is one among them. The consumption trend of dragon fruits in India is increasing due to their potential health benefits. Hence, the present study was conducted to the select best nutritional variety of dragon fruit through the biochemical analysis, by estimating the nutritional, phytonutrients and antioxidant activity in red-fleshed and white-fleshed dragon fruits. The moisture and fat content of white- fleshed dragon fruit comparatively had higher levels 84.70%, and 1.01% respectively compared to red-fleshed variety. Wherein, the red-fleshed dragon fruit exhibited higher levels of protein, crude fiber, carbohydrates, and energy: 0.70%, 0.87%, 20.99%, and 93.71 K cal per 100 g respectively when compared to the white-fleshed variety. The mineral composition of red- fleshed dragon fruit was high in iron (3.25 mg/100 g), calcium (47.52mg/100 g), sodium (9.11 mg/100 g), manganese (0.60 mg/100 g) and copper (0.14 mg/100 g) respectively compared to white-fleshed variety. However, Red-fleshed dragon fruit had higher levels of antioxidant activity, total phenols and total flavonoid contents. Thus, the present study highlights the nutritional richness of red-fleshed dragon fruit variety it can be also selected as a promising functional ingredient in food formulations and processing industries.
Shivani et al. (Mon,) studied this question.