Loading...
1 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
- The cherry drying as a complementary conservation process to conservation in coldPublication . Nunes, José; Silva, Pedro Dinho da; Pires, Luís; Gaspar, Pedro Dinis; Andrade, Luís P.Cherry is greatly enjoyed by consumers because of its excellent organoleptic and nutritional characteristics. This fruit is of the non-climacteric type, which forces its immediate commercialization after harvesting or else it should be properly conserved in cold. Every year there is a big waste of fresh cherry because he could not be marketed before deteriorating both in cooling chambers, or even in their own cherry trees due to a rapid ripening. In this project, the process of making cherry raisins is studied so as to provide increased use of fresh cherry. For that purpose, three different processes of dehydration of fresh cherry have been used, such as freeze drying, hot-air drying and solar drying. Three types of samples of pitted cherries were also used - natural cherry, blanching cherry and bleaching cherry with osmotic solution of fructose. In order to assess the performance of the dryers the curves of drying rate were determined and to assess the quality of the cherry raisins, fundamental parameters were determined, namely moisture content, water activity (aw), texture, total soluble solids and total acidity. The results show that the drying rate of cherry samples is similar in the lyophilizer and hot air dryer, and yet faster in the latter. The dryer with lower rate drying and hence with higher drying time was the solar dryer. The characteristics of the cherry raisins depend on the type of dryer used and the pre-treatment used. The blanching pretreatment proved to be the most suitable. Regarding dryers, the solar dryer provided good quality cherry raisins, showing great potential at industrial level with the advantage of not consuming energy.