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The halwa is a traditional thick sweet generally consumed by millions in the Middle East with more concentrated population in the South and Central Asia. Sweet corn halwa is one such traditional type prepared in the tribal region of middle Gujarat, India. It is one of the dairy delicacies of traditional Indian desserts, which needs to be optimized and dehydrated to assure the availability of the product during off-season and to provide good value in terms of money and enhancement of shelf life. The milk and sugar were added in 50 to 250 g/100 g and 12 to 14 g/100 g respectively for cooking of ingredients for 10 to 20 min to provide value to this traditional product for getting higher return to the entrepreneurs. The optimized sweet corn halwa was dehydrated in thin layers at 60 °C and drying data was fitted thin layer drying models. The physico-chemical properties and sensory evaluation of sweet corn halwa were evaluated during this experiment. The rehydrated product maintained similar overall acceptability, indicating comparable sensory characteristics with fresh sweet corn halwa.

The degradation kinetics of dehydrated sweet corn for total sugar, ascorbic acid, TSS, pH, rehydration parameters, colour and moisture content using low density polyethylene pouches (LDPE) and laminated aluminium foil pouches (LAFP) with or without vacuum were studied. The samples were kept for 3 months and were analysed at every 15 days. During the storage, total sugar, ascorbic acid and total soluble solids reduced from 10.50 to 9.73 g/100 g, 9.36 to 8.86 mg/100 g, 83 to 51°Brix respectively. Rehydration coefficient and rehydration ratio reduced from 90.28 to 75.27, 2.64 to 1.56. Colour L∗ value, a∗ value. b∗ value changed from 61.00 to 70.13, 42.93 to 53.27, 55.58 to 64.24 respectively resulting in increase in ΔE value and chroma value up to 16.29, 70.23 to 83.45 respectively. The moisture content increased from 2.12 to 3.92% in packages. The average sensory score of 7.86 even after 90 days of storage in laminated aluminium foil pouch with vacuum indicates that the product may be stored for 90 days satisfactorily. Zero and first order models fitted well and can be used for predicting various properties of dehydrated sweet corn during storage.