Development of Value Added Products from Dried Sea Cucumber (Holothuria scabra)

Value addition is any step in the production process that improves the product for the consumers and results in a higher net worth. Commercially, sea cucumbers have been collected about 1000 years ago. The processed sea cucumber is commercially known as Beach-demer in French, Hai-som in Chinese and Trepan in Indonesian. In some countries like Japan and Korea, sea cucumber body wall and viscera are consumed raw or pickled while they are also used in soaps and fried with meat and vegetables. Some of the value added products of sea cucumbers are salted sea cucumber, frozen and smoked sea cucumber and salted sea cucumber soup. Hornell first proposed improvement in the quality of beach-de-mer. On the other handdifferent quality principles were developed by Durairaj.

 Various suggestions on methods to produce quality sea cucumbers were proposed by James. Sea cucumbers mainly contain higher moisture and lower protein content compared to marine fish and shellfish. Processed sea cucumbers form an important source of income mainly for local communities near coastal areas in the Pacific. In the South Pacific countries, very little research has been done on post-harvest sea cucumber management while no research has been observed with regard to value addition to sea cucumbers as food. The present research attempted to produce value added food products (Biscuits and Jams) from sea cucumbers. Read more...................