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The world population is expected to be around 9 billion by 2050 which would be 34 per cent greater than the today’s population. This will enhance the food demand to match the rising population. Horticultural commodities in general and fruit in the particular has been designated as the source of nutraceuticals. For reaching up optimum level of production, Biostimulants may come up with and the emerging concept of to meet out with this challenge and over the last decade, utilization of natural plant biostimulants is gaining importance. The use of biostimulants can be extensively exploited under fruit crops as they contribute towards a crucial role in enhancing the anatomical, morphological, physiological, that ultimately ameliorated the fruit productivity, and quality of the fruits. In addition, the application of biostimulants helps in promoting physiological actions like photosynthesis, nutrients metabolism, enzymatic activities, chlorophyll, protein and carbohydrate content. It also helps to mitigate abiotic stress like water stress, salinity, temperature, and changes related to oxidation–reduction reaction, reactive oxygen species detoxification, stress signaling, and hormonal pathways. After much exploration regarding the effects of biostimulants on fruit crops, there is still a void that exists in the area related to its impact on various traits. Henceforth, an appropriate tactics approach is much needed under the areas of research about biostimulants. Graphical Abstract

Amylases are widely distributed and are one of the most studied enzymes. Such enzymes hydrolyze the starch molecules into polymers composed of glucose units. Amylases have potential application in a wide number of industrial processes such as food, fermentation and pharmaceutical industries. Amylases can be obtained from plants, animals and microorganisms. However, enzymes from fungal and bacterial sources have dominated applications in industrial sectors. The microbial source of amylase is preferred to other sources because of its plasticity and vast availability. The production of α-amylase is essential for conversion of starches into oligosaccharides. Starch is an important constituent of the human diet and is a major storage product of many economically important crops such as wheat, rice, maize, tapioca, and potato. The properties of each α-amylase such as thermostability, pH profile, pH stability, and Ca-independency are important in the development of fermentation process. This review focuses on the isolation, substrates of α-amylases, production of bacterial and fungal α-amylases, properties of α-amylases, and the use of these enzymes in industrial applications.

Pre-treatments for drying of wild pomegranate arils were standardized to check discolouration of dried arils. Steam blanching of arils for 30 s followed by sulphur fumigation at 0.3% for 60 min was found suitable as they took minimum time to dry a given tray load, and had minimum non-enzymatic browning, furfural, hydroxyl methyl furfural and moisture contents. The dried arils of the standardized pre-treatment recorded maximum scores for sensory characteristics like colour, texture, taste, aroma and overall acceptability.

Nuggets popularly known as warrian is the traditional household food item of India and prepared from black gram but deficit in essential amino acid, lysine. Present study conducted to prepare lysine enriched nuggets using white button mushrooms (WBM) that contain all the essential amino acids. Black gram paste was fortified with WBM 0 (T0) to 50 at 10 % increments (T1 to T5). Moisture, ash, crude protein and fat were increased in T0 to T5 ranged from 10.00 to 13.52 %, 4.00 to 4.18 %, 13.90 to 23.80 % and 0.37 to 1.00 %, respectively. The cooking weight, cooking losses and antioxidant activity (as DPPH) were increased with increase in WBM (lysine enrichment) in nuggets. In textural analysis, hardness decreased with increases fortification from 1.971 to 0.889 kg. Based on physico-chemical, cooking and textural properties, black gram to WBM ratio of 80: 20 was recommended.