Analysis of shelf life of dehydrated tomato powder

Abstract

Preservation of vegetables involving chemical additives is cheap and easy to operate technology best suited for application in developing countries to preserve perishable commodities like vegetables. An investigation was undertaken to study the shelf life of De-hydrated tomato powder. Control as well as pretreated tomato pieces were subjected to dehydration experiments and tomato powder was prepared. Powder samples were evaluated for peroxide value and sensory parameters. Results found that the appearance, colour, flavor, taste and texture of stored powders were changed as seen visually, due to this reason, organoleptic score of the recipes prepared with stored powder had decreased with increasing storage period. It was observed that, as storage period increased, mean score for colour of recipes had decreased significantly at one percent level. It was noticed that even though there was decrease in organoleptic score for sensory characteristics, recipes from powder were acceptable by the judges. Peroxide value of stored powders differed significantly between the months of storage, higher value being recorded on the third month of storage.