Mass transfer characters during osmo dehydration of red banana (Musa spp.)

Abstract

Drying and dehydration are most popular age old practices of food processing and osmo dehydration is an improvement over the traditional method which retains higher nutritional and sensory qualities of dried product. The efficiency of osmo dehydration depends on the mass transfer characters which occur during the osmotic process. In order to standardise the process variables such as shape of fruit slices, osmotic solution concentration and immersion time for osmo dehydration of Red Banana, an experiment was conducted to study the effect of these process variables on mass transfer characters viz., water loss, solid gain, percentage weight reduction and water loss to solid gain. Osmo dehydration was carried out using optimally ripened red banana sliced into three shapes (ring, round and chunks) of thickness 5 mm and osmosed in sucrose syrup of 40 ⁰Brix, 60 ⁰Brix and 80 ⁰Brix concentration for immersion time of 60, 120 and 180 minutes. Maximum solid gain (8.90%), water loss (9.59%) and weight reduction (10.00%) with water loss to solid gain ratio of 1.07 was observed in osmo dehydrated red banana chunks immersed in osmotic solution concentration of 80°Brix and immersion time of 180 minutes. The solid gain, water loss and percentage weight reduction increased with increase in osmotic concentration and immersion time irrespective of fruit shapes.