date juice decolourised by ultra-filtration and its use with stevioside sweetener in beverage formulation

date juice was treated by cross- flow ultra-filtration with molecular weight cut-off (mwco) of 5 kda. optimized levels of feed brix, tmp and operation time were determined as 47.13, 82.11 psi and 30 min, respectively. under such conditions, 80.94% decolourisation and 97.78 % turbidity reduction were obtained while loss of glucose and fructose were estimated to be only 3.49% and 9.62%, respectively. regarding sweetness, the results of beverage sensory indicated that samples prepared by 100% decolorized date juice, 50% sugar, + 50% stevioside, 50% decolorized date juice and + 50% stevioside did not show significant differences compared with the sample prepared by 100 % sugar. from the view point of the bitter aftertaste, samples prepared by 100 % sugar and 100 % stevioside had the highest and lowest desirability, respectively, while there was no significant difference between colour and clarity of the samples.