engleski

Valorization of pumpkin and its by-products as a source of nutrients

Pumpkin (Cucurbita L.) is a squash and gourd fruit vegetable grown worldwide. The large production of pumpkin is related to the growing interest of consumers in the intake of a wide range of nutrients and phytochemicals through an adequate and balanced diet. As a result of the large use of pumpkin (cooked, baked, and processed), various by-products, such as peels and seeds are produced. Although these by-products are commonly used to fortify animal feed, much of them go unused. To find out whether these discharged fractions can be reused as a low-cost source of value-added compounds, the results of their chemical composition are presented in this study. The content of moisture, ash, fat, protein, and dietary fibre was analysed not only in the peels and seeds, but also in the raw pumpkin from which these residues are obtained. The results showed that peels and seeds contained higher amounts of ash (0.97-2.75%), fat (3.24-21.44%), proteins (4.27-14.88%), and dietary fibre (18.52-56.55%) compared to raw pumpkin. The content of ash, fat, protein and fibre in raw pumpkin was 0.55%, 1.54%, 1.76% and 17%, respectively. The moisture content decreased in the following order: raw pumpkin (93.97%), pumpkin peel (87.78%) and seeds (9.81%). From the results it can be concluded that the utilisation of pumpkin fractions is interesting not only from the environmental point of view, but also from the nutritional point of view due to the high content of ash, fat, protein and fibre. Of course, the mineral composition and content as well as the amino acid and fatty acid profiles still need to be completed to verify their status as sustainable food ingredients.

pumpkin ; pumpkin by-products ; chemical composition ; nutrients

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