Shital B Jadhav and Nilesh Y Jadhav

Dragon fruit (Hylocereus spp.) is a recently introduced super fruit in India, gaining popularity both in the rural and urban areas because of its attractive colour, delicious taste, high nutritive and medicinal values. It is adaptable to humid as well as semi-arid tropical and subtropical conditions. The growing acceptability of the fruit along with its immense antioxidants and medicinal properties. Red dragon fruit (Hylocereus polyrhizus) is one of Indonesia’s com-modities widely consumed and developed nowadays. Dragon fruit or pitaya is anonlocal fruit that is much favored by the public because it has efficacy, benefits, and high nutritional value. The most well-known efficacy of dragon fruit is its antioxidant content. This article aims to explain the characteristics and posthar-vest handling of dragon fruit. Dragon fruit can be consumed directly or processed into juice, jam, syrup, and other products. Furthermore, every 100 g of dragon fruit peel contains 150.46 mg of betacyanin pigment. Dragon fruit peel also contains vitamins C, E, and A, alkaloids, terpenoids, flavonoids, thiamine, niacin, pyrildoxine, cobalamin, phenolic, carotene, and Phyto albumin. It is reported to have the pharmacological activities like anti-oxidant, anticancer, anti-diabetic, anti-fertility, anti-ulcer, cardio protective and neuroprotective activities.

DOI: 10.22271/phyto.2023.v12.i6c.14790

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