Nutritional Composition of Detanninated and Fresh Pomegranate Peel Powder

Pomegranate (Punica granatum) peel is a nutritive, antioxidant rich byproduct, easily available after production of pomegranate juice and ready to eat arils. The present study is undertaken to know the nutritional importance of fresh and detanninated pomegranate peel powder. Fresh pomegranate peel collected after juice extraction from Bhagwa variety of pomegranate. Fresh peels were crushed fine through grinder and passed through 2 mm sieve to collect homogeneous and uniform sized pomegranate peel. The crushed peels were divided in to two equal parts in which one part used for detannination and other part used as fresh pomegranate peel. One part of fresh pomegranate peel percolated in equal amount of water for 12 hour. The whole material squeezed through a muslin cloth and find out the detanninated solid peel portion. The fresh and detanninated pomegranate peel were dried in hot air oven and crushed it to get fine powder. Both fresh and detanninated pomegranate peel powder were evaluated for its nutritional value (eg. ash, ether extract, crude protein, crude fiber, neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber, lignin, nitrogen free extract, metabolized energy, vitamins and minerals) including total tannin content as tannic acid. The fresh pomegranate peel powder showed good nutritional composition with high tannin content but detanninated peel powder showed double benefit i.e. separated hydrolysable tannin/ellagitannin and detanninated pomegranate peel powder containing good amount of nutritional components with appropriate amount of tannin which can be recommended as novel cattle feed supplement.