The objective of this study is to provide a process for separating fructose from a mixture of sugars containing essentially fructose and glucose, obtained from date palm fruits. The extraction procedure of date syrup from fresh dates gave a yield of 86.5% solids after vacuum drying. A process for separating fructose from an aqueous solution of date syrup involved adding the date syrup solutions (20, 30 and 40% by weight) to a chromatographic column filled with Dowex polystyrene strong cation exchange gel matrix resin Ca^2 + and divinylbenzene, a functional group, sulfonic acid, particle size 320 µm, with a flow rate of 0.025 and 0.05 bed volume/min, under 30 and 70° C column temperature. After the date sugar solution batch, a calculated quantity of water was added to the column. Glucose was retained by the resin more weakly than fructose and proceeded faster into the water batch flowing ahead. Three fractions were collected: a glucose-rich fraction, a return fraction, and a fructose-rich fraction. The return fraction is based on when the peaks of fructose and glucose were reached, which could be determined by means of an analyzer (polarimeter) based on the property of glucose and fructose solutions to turn the polarization level of polarized light. A high yield of fructose is obtained at 70° C column temperature with a flow rate of 0.025 bed volume/min and date syrup solution containing 40% sugar concentration. The low recovery by weight obtained using date syrup solutions having a sugar concentration of 20 and 30%, encourages the use of a concentration of 40%. However, with the 40% date syrup supply the average concentrations of glucose and fructose in the return fractions were more than 40%, which can be used for diluting the thick date syrup solution extracted from dates.

Dates are highly perishable fruits, and maintaining their quality during storage is crucial. The current study aims to investigate the impact of storage conditions on the quality of dates (Khalas and Sukary cultivars) at the Tamer stage and predict their quality attributes during storage using artificial neural networks (ANN). The studied storage conditions were the modified atmosphere packing (MAP) gases (CO₂, O₂, and N), packaging materials, storage temperature, and storage time, and the evaluated quality attributes were moisture content, firmness, color parameters (L*, a*, b*, and ∆E), pH, water activity, total soluble solids, and microbial contamination. The findings demonstrated that the storage conditions significantly impacted (p < 0.05) the quality of the two stored date cultivars. The use of MAP with 20% CO₂ + 80% N had a high potential to decrease the rate of color transformation and microbial growth of dates stored at 4 °C for both stored date cultivars. The developed ANN models efficiently predicted the quality changes of stored dates closely aligned with observed values under the different storage conditions, as evidenced by low Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) values. In addition, the reliability of the developed ANN models was further affirmed by the linear regression between predicted and measured values, which closely follow the 1:1 line, with R² values ranging from 0.766 to 0.980, the ANN models demonstrate accurate estimating of fruit quality attributes. The study’s findings contribute to food quality and supply chain management through the identification of optimal storage conditions and predicting the fruit quality during storage under different atmosphere conditions, thereby minimizing food waste and enhancing food safety.

Processed cheese has rapidly been established as a commercial product in recent years. A new ingredient, a byproduct from date fruit seed (DFS), was obtained and tested as a fortified fiber from food industrial waste in block-type processed cheese. This is the first inclusive investigation to report such a test. Different concentrations of DFS (0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20%) were added to block-type processed cheese as a partial substitution for butter. The current investigation was undertaken to estimate the impact of the partial substitution of butter by DFS and its effect on the product’s quality in terms of its shelf life and physicochemical, microstructure, color, and sensory properties. Quality was assessed over a 150-day storage period. The results indicate that adding DFS to cheese increased its nutritional value due to the addition of fiber. Additionally, the texture profile of cheese was decreased in terms of hardness, adhesion, springiness, and cohesiveness. The overall structure of cheeses became less compact and had a more open cheese network, which increased with increasing DFS% and duration of storage. Moreover, DFS exhibited the darkest color with increasing ratios of supplementary DFS and duration of storage. Based on the results found in the present investigation, it was concluded that an acceptable quality of block-type processed cheese could be achieved using DFS fiber at 5% and 10% levels of fortification.