Bhubaneswar, May 17: Come Sunday, tropical flavours will tickle your taste buds. Juice, squash and carbonated drinks made from cashew apples will be launched at the fruit exhibition that begins on May 19.

The Odisha State Cashew Development Corporation, in partnership with the Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology, has blended the flavours of the red fruit.

The corporation will sell the juice in ready-to-serve pet pack of 180ml, squash bottles of 750ml and as carbonated juice in glass bottles. Though the price is yet to be decided, officials promise an affordable pinch.

To make the drink taste good, varsity researchers have used starch (sago granules) to offset the astringent effect of cashew apples. The process to prepare the juice begins with cashew apples being collected. The fruit is then treated with hot and cold water before it is sent for crushing.

Additional sugar content is dissolved to derive the perfect sweet taste. The raw juice is then treated with chemical preservatives, citric acid and sago granules. It is then left to stand for 48 hours so that the sediments settle at the bottom.

While eight grams of sago granules is required for one litre of raw cashew apple juice, preservatives give it a shelf life of eight months.

The attempt to produce juice is significant as cashew apples are wasted after the nuts are taken out. Sources said while Odisha annually produced 90,000 metric tonnes of the fruit, cashew apples weighing eight times the nuts get wasted.

Corporation officials said this was the first attempt to commercialise cashew apple juice in the country.

“Though Kerala has been trying to do it, it is yet to go big with it. But we have already prepared around 3,000 litres of juice to be launched at the fruit exhibition on a pilot basis. If the response is good, we will take up the processing on a bigger scale,” said the corporation’s cashew apple processing unit in-charge N. Behera.