Investigating the Influence of Drying Temperature and Tray Loads on Kinetics, Moisture Diffusivity, Retention of Bioactive Compounds, and Color Characteristics of Baby Corn

Ubaida Akbar, Vikas Nanda, Prasad Rasane, Jyoti Singh and Sawinder Kaur

Abstract

The drying kinetics of long-graded baby corn was investigated using a tray dryer at 50-70 °C with a tray load of 0.30-0.45 g/cm². The sample was given pretreatment of microwave blanching to inactivate the peroxidase enzyme. Drying data was fitted in three thin layer drying models viz. Page, Lewis, and Henerson-Pabis. The goodness of models was evaluated based on coefficient of determination (R2), root mean square error (RMSE), and chi-square (ꭓ2). Page model was found to be the best-fit model. The effective moisture diffusivity for baby corn pieces at different temperatures (50, 60, and 70 °C) with varying tray loads (0.45, 0.40, 0.35, and 0.30 g/cm2) ranged from 2.40×10-11 to 7.11×10-12 (m2/s); 4.06×10-12 to 9.94×10-12 (m2/s); 2.94×10-12 to 6.80×10-12 (m2/s); 3.65×10-12 to 8.01×10-12 (m2/s), respectively. The activation energy was found in the range of 57416.48 to 36499.29 (J/mol) for tray load 0.45 g/cm2-0.30 g/cm2 respectively. The effect of different temperatures (50 °C – 70 °C) at tray load 0.3 g/cm2 was studied on various heat-labile components of baby corn and color characteristics. A significant reduction in ascorbic acid at p ≤0.05 was found during microwave blanching (21.05 ± 0.15 mg/100 g to 15 ± 0.06 mg/100 g). The effect of drying at different temperatures showed that higher temperatures short time resulted in better retention of ascorbic acid (15.02 ± 0.02 mg/100 g) and total phenolic content (49.02 ± 0.03 mg GAE/100 g). The antioxidant activity in terms of DPPH (% radical scavenging activity) and FRAP was found to be 38.00 ± 0.01% and 124.63 ± 0.01 μg/ml. A significant change in the color values was observed which might be due to the thermal degradation of pigments or nonenzymatic browning reactions.

Published on: October 31, 2023
doi: 10.17756/jfcn.2023-s1-028
Citation: Akbar U, Nanda V, Rasane P, Singh S, Kaur S. 2023. Investigating the Influence of Drying Temperature and Tray Loads on Kinetics, Moisture Diffusivity, Retention of Bioactive Compounds, and Color Characteristics of Baby Corn. J Food Chem Nanotechnol 9(S1): S217-S224.

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