Garlic Powder, which is used mainly as a condiment in food preparations, also serves as carminative and gastric stimulant in many medical preparations. As a condiment, it is used for flavouring mayonnaise and tomato ketchup or sauces, salad dressings, meat sausages, gravies, stews, spaghetti, chutneys, pickles, curried dishes, etc. It aids in digestion and absorption of food. It also possesses anthelmintic and antiseptic properties and because of these properties it is used in a number of medical preparations.

Manufacture and marketing of garlic powder is a well established industry in USA and Europe. In most developing nations, garlic was consumed as such and no efforts were made to produce dehydrated garlic or garlic powder with a result that nearly 20% of the crop was wasted due to respiration, transpiration and micro-biological spoilage during ordinary storage of garlic bulb. Availability of raw garlic at cheaper prices in many developing nations offers a very attractive opportunity for entrepreneur to produce this product at competitive prices, particularly in view of cheaper labour available in these nations.. The powder being a good value added product, transportation cost to far distances becomes negligible and good export earnings are possible.

PROCESS

The conventional technique of making garlic powder consists in removing by hand the outer papery skin of the garlic bulb, separation and peeling of cloves manually, dehydrating and powdering them before packing. This technique is tedious, laborious and time consuming and hence uneconomical. The improved process produces dehydrated garlic powder, free from husk. In this process the garlic bulbs are broken, the cloves and papery husks are separated by aspiration. The cloves are mechanically pre-conditioned and dried. Dried material is suitably processed to loosen and separate the adhering husk layer from the meat. The mixture is suitably separated and the dried meat after inspection and quality control, powdered to obtain the final product.