Drying Characteristics of Plum Tomato under Different Physical Treatments for Producing Powder

摘要

Plum tomatoes were dried under hot air convection for producing powder. Different physical treatments were performed to achieve faster drying and milling. Initial moisture of tomato was 93.97 % with TSS of 4.6 %, which was dried to around 5 % moisture. Among the treatments, longitudinally cut in 16 pieces and cross-section slice segments took less time to dry and gave higher (6.4 %) drying yield. The effectiveness of treatments on drying characteristics and quality of tomato powder were examined. Mathematical models were employed by non-linear regression analysis to appropriately describe the drying behaviours. The physico-chemical quality characteristics of fresh and powder tomato were evaluated in terms of size and shape, oeel pulp seed ratio, TSS, ascorbic acid, acidity, lycopene and solubility. The overall sensory perception revealed that all treatment samples of tomato powder reconstituted well in the form of soup-mix and achieved nearly equal scores on different quality attributes.