IPB Student Transforms Collagen of Tuna Skin into Jelly Drink

Siti Agni Maharani, student from Department of Aquatic Product Technology, Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Technology (FPIK), Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) succeed to produce jelly drink from tuna skin collagen. Siti managed to utilize tuna processing’s waste into ingredient of jelly drink making.

“My research initially noticed the opportunity of Indonesia as a country with the highest potential for tuna in the world, in fact it become the most exported fish to various countries. But unfortunately, tuna waste cannot be used optimally yet. Based on the previous researches, I found out that there are 30 percent of tuna’s total weight which becomes waste. Those include skin, bone and scales,” explained Siti.

Other than that, Siti also stated that her research is also driven by the amount of collagen on market which is still made from pig skin. Surely the usage of collagen from pig skin receives disagreement from halalness aspect.

“So it is needed an alternative source of collage which is accordance with consumer’s demand in general, especially in jelly making,” she added.

Jelly drink is one of food products which is convenient, nutritious, and liked by all level of people at any ages. Jelly drink in general contains carragennan as dietary fiber and it gives gel texture to the drink.

“The improvement of food product in jelly drink can use collagen as one of the efforts to give an alternative in consuming nutritious food product.,”.

Based on her research, tuna skin has high protein content about 28,75 percent. As for the best result was when jelly is given collagen with concentration of 0,3 percent which include gel texture, panelist preference and also nutritional content. (qa)