Abstract

ORTIZ G., Sanín et al. Effect of the osmo dehydration and drying on carotenoids retention of squash fruit. Acta Agron. [online]. 2008, vol.57, n.4, pp.269-274. ISSN 0120-2812.

The squash fruit provides provitamin A in form of alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and lutein that can be degraded when dehydrated to stabilize dry matter. The objective of the research was to analyze the carotene retention in response to the osmo dehydration conditioning process (OD) with pure molasses and hot air drying (HA) without sun exposure vs. partial sun exposure (S). The best stable dry matter yield corresponded to HA with and without sodium eritorbate protection (SE) in 5% solution with 8.5 and 14 hours of permanence in the process and mass yield between 99.45% and 98.5% respectively, that corresponded to the following humid-solid loss models: Y = 454.66935e^-0.2648339x (r=0.965) and Y = 463.07976e^-0.16167667x (r=0.978) respectively. Total fresh fruit carotene oscillated between 1114.9 and 1365.8 mg gr^-1, and 222.2, 60.2 and 157.5 mg gr^-1 of alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and lutein respectively. The squash fruit conditioning process to a 12% stable dry matter moisture, requires hot air drying (55C for 9 hours with an air flow of 10 m.s^-1) in absence of sun exposure, to retain up to 45% of total carotene and achieve enough raw material up to 66.8, 33.5 and 44.7 mg gr^-1 of alpha-carotene, beta-carotene and lutein respectively.

Keywords : Cucurbita moschata; squash fruits; post harvest conditioner; carotenoids retention; a-carotene; b-carotene; luteins.