India is regarded as the ‘Home of Spices’. Alarge proportion of the spices imported globally every year comes from India. Use of such spices in traditional foods like pickles occupies an important place among the processedfoods in India. India is the second largest vegetable producer in world. Hence, processing of vegetables with traditional Indian spices has good scope for the trade development overseas. Different variants of gherkin (Cucumisanguria) pickles were developed using traditional Indian spices available locally. The pickles were packed in glass jars through aseptic packing technology by vacuum sealing and pasteurization. The developed pickles were studied for thephysico-chemical properties and sensory attributes soon after pasteurization and after 15 days of stabilization period. Further, the effect of heat treatment/pasteurization on the nutritional profile of the developed pickles after 15 days of stabilization period was studied.The study showed that use of spices in either fresh or dehydrated form, enhanced the sensory profile of gherkin pickles. The four variants of spice based picklesdeveloped, were well accepted among the panelistpre- and poststabilization. The addition of spices enhanced the nutrient content of the pickles when compared with plain gherkin vegetables.Though this study focused only on gherkin pickles, Indian spices can be very well explored in other vegetable products that can be processed and stored for longer time.

Keywords: Gherkin; Spice; Vacuum Sealing; Pasteurization; Osmosis; Stabilization.