INTRODUCTION The wood apple (Feronia limonia Swingle) belongs to the family Rutaceae, is commonly found in dry deciduous forests (Mazumder et al., 2006). The significance of the wood apple fruit lies in its curative properties, the fruit is used in India as a liver and cardiac tonic when unripe as astringent means of halting diarrhea and dysentery (Singhania and Ray 2019), effective treatment for hiccups, sore throat and diseases of gums (Kerkar et al., 2020), the pulp is poultice onto bites and stings of venomous insects also it has hypoglycaemic, antitumor, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial and hepatoprotective activity (Srivastava et al., 2019). This fruit is considered to be one of the natural sources of anti-oxidants due to its potential radical scavenging activity of various phytochemicals (Moazzem et al., 2019). The flesh of the wood apple fruit is sweet, somewhat acidic, aromatic and has high nutritional value. The fruit comprises (40.47 to 66.46%) pulp, seed (3.31 to 12.48%), fibre (3.85 to 5.08%), moisture (65.32 to 74.04%), TSS (12.08 to 18.44oB), acidity (2.44 to 6.12%), brix: acid (2.46 to 6.48), pH (2.80 to 3.54), total sugars (2.23 to 6.83%), pectin (1.02 to 2.13%), vit-C (2.88 to 6.24 mg/100 g), vit-B12 (0.05 to 0.27 mg/100 g), calcium (80.1 to 111.35 mg/100 g), phosphorus (37.10 to 69.17 mg/100 g) and iron (0.05 to 16.29 mg/100 g) (Gorabal, 2020). Because of its excellent flavor and nutritive value, this fruit has a great potential for value addition. A wide variety of value-added products can be prepared from this fruit including beverages, jam, jelly and leather (Gorabal et al., 2020). The fruit is not popular as a dessert fruit because it exhibits difficulty while eating as it has a hard shell, sticky texture and abundant seeds. Therefore, it is not easily marketed in fresh form and should be processed into acceptable products (Gowda, 2017). Toffee is one of the confectionary nutritional products, has a chewy texture and is a good source of dietary fibre and natural sugar hence product is liked by all age groups peoples (Bhokre et al., 2010). Nowadays global demand for fruit-based toffees were increasing day by day (Shastri et al., 1979: Domale et al., 2008). The toffee can be better utilized as a vehicle to promote consumption and utilization of wood apple fruit, which have otherwise less market demand and quite limited shelf life therefore a study was conducted to exploit the excellent and delightful pulp characters having a potential, nutritional and medicinal value of wood apple fruits by converting them into spicy toffee which would help to overcome the market glut and thereby assure the economic prices to the fruit. MATERIAL AND METHODS An experiment was carried out during 2020-21 in the Department of Post Harvest Technology, KRC College of Horticulture, Arabhavi (UHS, Bagalkot), Karnataka. The fully ripe fruits were selected for toffee preparation and the methodology used for the preparation of spicy toffee is mentioned in Fig. 1. The Products were analyzed for moisture content using a moisture analyzer (Model: P1019319, A & D Company Limited, Japan). TSS (oB) was measured by using an ‘Erma’ make hand refractometer after necessary corrections. Titratable acidity (%) and ascorbic acid (mg/100 g) content was estimated as per the modified procedure of AOAC (Anon., 1984). The non-enzymatic browning (OD value) was estimated according to the procedure of Srivastava and Sanjeevkumar (1998). Reducing sugars were estimated as per the Dinitro-salicylic acid method (Miller, 1972). The total sugar content was estimated as per the procedure given in AOAC (Anon., 1984). The per cent non-reducing sugars were obtained by subtracting the values of reducing sugars from that of total sugars. The minerals such as calcium, phosphorus and iron present in the spicy toffee were estimated as per the procedure given in AOAC (Anon., 1990). The organoleptic characters were evaluated by a panel of semi-trained judges consisting of teachers and post-graduate students of KRC College of Horticulture, Arabhavi, on a nine-point hedonic scale as per the method of Ranganna (2003). The total bacterial and fungal count was taken as per the method of Harrigan and Mc-Cance (1966). The data recorded on the Physico-chemical and organoleptic parameters were subjected to statistical analysis in CRD. The interpretation of data was carried out in accordance with Panse and Sukhatme (1985). The level of significance used in the ‘F’ test was p=0.01. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Effect of different recipes on the nutritional quality of wood apple spicy toffee. The nutritional quality of wood apple spicy toffee was affected by the advancement of the storage period. The moisture content of spicy toffee decreased from 12.87 to 12.31 per cent during the storage period (Table 2) could be due to the natural dehydration of the product (Aggarwal and Kaur 2014). Similar observations were made by Gorabal (2020) in the wood apple fruit bar. The TSS was increased (78.00 to 78.06oB) throughout the entire period of storage (Table 2) due to acid hydrolysis of insoluble polysaccharides especially gums and pectin into soluble sugars, the results were in accordance with the findings of Nalage et al. (2014) in aonla ginger mixed toffee. The ascorbic acid content of spicy toffee was found to decrease (1.98 to 1.74 mg/100 g) during storage due to the conversion of ascorbic acid to di-hydroxy ascorbic acid (Table 2), titratable acidity decreased from 2.37 to 2.28 per cent during storage it might be due to the reaction of acids with basic minerals in the products. The pH was increased from 3.60 to 3.65during the storage period (Table 3) might be due to a decrease in the acid concentrations in toffees. Similar results were noticed by Vidhya and Narin (2011) in wood apple bar and Panna et al. (2019) in guava toffee. Similar findings i.e. decrease in ascorbic acid and titratable acidity during storage were also reported by Chavan et al. (2016) in guava toffee. Progressive increase (1.01 to 1.05) in browning (O. D. values) of spicy toffee was observed with the advancement of the storage period (Table 3) it may be due to the formation of furfural and hydroxyl furfural by aerobic and anaerobic degradation of ascorbic acid, sugars and organic acids (Kumar et al., 2019). The same type of findings was noticed by Nayak et al. (2012) in aonla candy. The total and reducing sugars were increased (61.21 to 61.42% and 16.14 to 16.56%, respectively) and non-reducing sugars were decreased (42.82 to 42.61%) throughout the storage period (Table 4). The increase in the total and reducing sugar content of toffee could be due to acid hydrolysis of insoluble polysaccharides especially gums and pectin into soluble sugars. On the other hand, the non-reducing sugars were decreased during the storage period, this might be due to inversion. The results were in accordance with the findings of Kohinkar et al. (2012) in fig and guava toffee and Chavan et al. (2016) in guava toffee. A negligible reduction in the calcium, phosphorus and iron content (27.07 to 27.04, 34.13 to 34.11 and 4.19 to 4.16 mg/100 g) in toffee was observed (Table 5). This was due to the light, oxygen and water content will affect the mineral content of the product during storage, which will result in oxidation and reduction of these minerals. Vidhya and Narain (2011); Gorabal (2020) also noticed similar kinds of results in wood apple bar stored for 3 months under ambient condition. Effect of different recipes on organoleptic quality and safety of wood apple spicy toffee. The spicy toffee exhibited significant variations with respect to all the sensory quality parameters. The mean organoleptic scores decreased from an initial value of 8.19 to 7.63 for color and appearance, 7.09 to 6.71 for flavor, 7.69 to 6.98 for taste, 7.91 to 7.17 for texture and 7.72 to 7.20 for overall acceptability during the storage period of 3 months (Table 6 and 7).The overall decline in the sensory score during the storage may be due to some undesirable changes taking place in the product during storage. Similar results were noticed by Kumar et al. (2019) in aonla and papaya toffee; Gorabal (2020) in wood apple fruit bar. No microbial growth was observed during the storage period. Ensuring that, the product was safe even after 90 days of storage, because of the less moisture, low water activity of spicy toffee and high acidic nature of pulp.